Andrew Crowell

Wall Street offers a virtually unlimited smorgasbord of investment products and services. Andrew Crowell's strategy for competing: Stick with meat and potatoes, forget the rest. Crowell heads Los Angeles-based Crowell, Weedon & Co., a brokerage that prides itself on being a throwback to a less complicated time.

Wall Street offers a virtually unlimited smorgasbord of investment products and services. Andrew Crowell's strategy for competing: Stick with meat and potatoes, forget the rest. Crowell heads Los Angeles-based Crowell, Weedon & Co., a brokerage that prides itself on being a throwback to a less complicated time.

Los Angeles stock brokerage Crowell, Weedon & Co. on Wednesday said it was acquired by a larger rival, though terms were not released. Chief Executive Andrew Crowell said his firm was bought by D.A. Davidson & Co. The deal would further strengthen the firms, Crowell said. Combined, they will hold $43.5 billion in client assets, with Crowell Weedon bringing in $9 billion of that. Discussions of a combination began about three years ago, Crowell said, but really took off in the last year and a half.

Even the most financially conservative companies can be tempted by the lure of fast money. Crowell, Weedon & Co., a regional brokerage based in Los Angeles, has preached old-fashioned stock and bond picking to its clients since the depths of the Great Depression. But the company recently lost more than $3 million on credit default swaps tied to the housing market, according to two people who were familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it. The blowup occurred at a trading desk set up to make bearish bets on housing using the same kind of tricky financial instruments that nearly sank giant insurer American International Group Inc. in New York in 2008.

Donald W. Crowell, head of the independent investment brokerage Crowell, Weedon & Co. in Los Angeles since 1967, died Sunday at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena after a long illness. He was 69. Founded in 1932 by Crowell's father, Warren, and George Weedon, Crowell Weedon is one of the oldest and largest stock brokerages on the West Coast. The firm has nine customer offices, all in Southern California, and its 20,000 clients hold about $7 billion in assets.

Voters have little interest in spending taxpayer money to keep the Los Angeles Rams in Orange County, reflecting their sense that the team's departure would not severely affect the county's image, according to a Times Orange County Poll. The poll, conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates, found that only three in 10 county voters feel keeping the Rams is important to them personally, while nearly 70% say it is unimportant.

Orange County voters have little interest in spending taxpayer money to keep the Los Angeles Rams in the county, reflecting their sense that the team's departure would not severely affect the county's image, according to a Times Orange County poll. The poll, conducted by Mark Baldassare and Associates, found that only three in 10 county voters feel keeping the Rams is important to them personally, while nearly 70% say it is unimportant.