Bridge Capital Holdings announced it expanded its Southern California presence, including moving into a larger facility in Costa Mesa and adding several professional business bankers to the team.

With this expansion, Bridge Bank’s Southern California office offers a full complement of banking products for small- and mid-market companies. This includes corporate finance and ABL, technology banking and other commercial banking products, including employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) lending, in addition to the SBA lending services that have been offered in Orange County and Los Angeles County for several years.

Caroline Harkins, SVP, is responsible for the region, including the development of the banking teams, establishing strategic partnerships and the growth of the client portfolio. Bridge Bank’s recent hires in Southern California are Jorge Visitacion as Capital Financial Division (CFD) team leader, Elisabeth Schutz as SVP, ESOP Advisory Group, and JC Timmons as Corporate Banking team leader. Additionally, Grant Simon has relocated from Bridge Bank’s headquarters in San Jose as relationship manager in the Capital Finance Group.

Visitacion has almost 20 years of experience in commercial lending and for the past three years co-led East-West Bank’s ABL Division in Pasadena where he was responsible for overseeing a portfolio of middle-market companies and was also an integral part of redefining and constructing the bank’s ABL infrastructure by implementing guidelines and policies to improve bank-wide processes. Previous to East-West Bank, Visitacion spent seven years at Wells Fargo where he rose from AVP and senior sales associate through relationship manager to VP and senior underwriter in the Loan Originations Group of the Wells Fargo Trade Capital Group.

Schutz is responsible for analyzing ESOP loan requests and identifying new ESOP lending opportunities for Bridge Bank throughout the bank’s geographic markets. She brings 35 years of banking experience to Bridge Bank and was most recently SVP in JPMorgan Chase’s ESOP Advisory Group where she was responsible for generating new ESOP lending opportunities with middle-market companies.

JC will apply almost 15 years of middle-market banking experience for the growth of Bridge Bank’s Southern California corporate efforts. Prior to joining Bridge Bank, JC was vice president at Community Bank where he and his team were focused on serving Southern California businesses, including C&I, real estate and ESOP credits. Timmons also previously owned his own company, Timmons Co. that created strategies for banks and privately-held businesses to be more valuable. He also spent eight years with Spectrum Bank in various leadership positions, focused on the development of the sales team and the middle-market portfolio.

“I’m thrilled to see our professional team of experienced business bankers expand here in Southern California,” said Caroline Harkins, Bridge Bank’s Southern California regional manager. “Our team is diverse, talented and knowledgeable, and has a proven track record of being sharply focused on the success of their clients.”