Bill Hambrecht

After managing the initial public offering of 1 million Ravenswood Winery Inc. shares in April's debut of a new IPO auction technique, W.R. Hambrecht & Co. and its chairman have taken the unusual step of repurchasing about 600,000 of the vintner's shares since the offering. The encore to W.R. Hambrecht's first test of its online "Dutch auction" IPO system gives the San Francisco investment bank a 13% stake in Ravenswood, according to a regulatory filing. A W.R.

William R. Hambrecht has had a lot better luck picking stocks than picking grapes. The Bay Area investment banker who co-founded Hambrecht & Quist and took public some of the biggest names in technology is now struggling to hold on to his favorite private investment: his prestigious Sonoma County winery. Hambrecht recently defaulted on a $732,993 loan payment on Belvedere Winery in Healdsburg, Calif.

Two of the most successful veterans of California's investment banking community--Thomas Weisel and Bill Hambrecht--are entrepreneurs again, and they're shaking up the marketplace with their new ventures. Both men, Weisel, 57, and Hambrecht, 63, spent decades in San Francisco growing two of California's highest-profile regional investment banks, Montgomery Securities and Hambrecht & Quist.

The third time seemed to be the charm Wednesday for San Francisco investment bank W.R. Hambrecht & Co.'s innovative "OpenIPO" system, given the successful initial public offering sold by Acton, Mass.-based Andover.net Inc. through lead underwriter Hambrecht. Shares of Andover.net (ticker symbol: ANDN), which runs a network of Web sites about the Linux computer operating system and other so-called open-source software, more than tripled in their trading debut Wednesday on Nasdaq to close at $63.

The third time seemed to be the charm Wednesday for San Francisco investment bank W.R. Hambrecht & Co.'s innovative "OpenIPO" system, given the successful initial public offering sold by Acton, Mass.-based Andover.net Inc. through lead underwriter Hambrecht. Shares of Andover.net (ticker symbol: ANDN), which runs a network of Web sites about the Linux computer operating system and other so-called open-source software, more than tripled in their trading debut Wednesday on Nasdaq to close at $63.

William R. Hambrecht has had a lot better luck picking stocks than picking grapes. The Bay Area investment banker who co-founded Hambrecht & Quist and took public some of the biggest names in technology is now struggling to hold on to his favorite private investment: his prestigious Sonoma County winery. Hambrecht recently defaulted on a $732,993 loan payment on Belvedere Winery in Healdsburg, Calif.

* Adelphia Communications Corp. can move to Denver from Coudersport, Pa., a bankruptcy judge said, turning aside objections by founder John Rigas and a shareholders' panel. * Salon Media Group Inc. said it raised $800,000, enough to keep the company out of the dot-com graveyard. Investment banker Bill Hambrecht and Adobe Systems Inc. founder John Warnock provided the financial reprieve.

W.R. Hambrecht & Co., the San Francisco investment bank founded by Bill Hambrecht, said Wednesday that computer networking giant Novell Inc. has taken a minority stake in the firm. The size and amount of the stake by Novell, made through its venture capital arm, wasn't disclosed. The investment is expected to help W.R. Hambrecht, formed in January 1998, fund its growth. The firm recently launched its OpenIPO system, an auction-based method of taking companies public on the Internet.

A Wall Street dealmaker and Google executive are teaming up to form a professional football league with the intent of putting franchises in North American cities with no NFL teams. Investment banker Bill Hambrecht and Tim Armstrong, vice president of advertising sales for Google Inc., have pledged $2 million each to form the United Football League, slated to begin as soon as August 2008. The two reportedly have recruited their first franchise owner in Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

In an innovative first-time stock offering that allowed individual investors to set share prices and buy stock directly online, Ravenswood Winery Inc. of Sonoma's stock rose 38 cents Friday to close at $10.88 in its Nasdaq debut. The initial public offering, or IPO, was priced Thursday night at $10.50 a share and was underwritten by San Francisco investment bank W.R. Hambrecht & Co. through its "OpenIPO" system.

After managing the initial public offering of 1 million Ravenswood Winery Inc. shares in April's debut of a new IPO auction technique, W.R. Hambrecht & Co. and its chairman have taken the unusual step of repurchasing about 600,000 of the vintner's shares since the offering. The encore to W.R. Hambrecht's first test of its online "Dutch auction" IPO system gives the San Francisco investment bank a 13% stake in Ravenswood, according to a regulatory filing. A W.R.

Two of the most successful veterans of California's investment banking community--Thomas Weisel and Bill Hambrecht--are entrepreneurs again, and they're shaking up the marketplace with their new ventures. Both men, Weisel, 57, and Hambrecht, 63, spent decades in San Francisco growing two of California's highest-profile regional investment banks, Montgomery Securities and Hambrecht & Quist.

Tech financier Bill Hambrecht has had better luck with apples than with grapes. The investment banker who helped bring such household names as Apple Computer Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. to market has sold off one of his prized Sonoma vineyards. Healdsburg, Calif.-based Rodney Strong Vineyards said Monday that it had acquired the 516-acre Rockaway Vineyard site that Hambrecht put on the block this year as part of a financial restructuring of his wine interests.

I won. I think. Getting 100 shares of Ravenswood Winery in its initial public offering turned out to be surprisingly easy. Watching them test the stock market now, without any traditional analyst support, could turn out to be the hard part. From this corner, W.R. Hambrecht & Co.'s novel "OpenIPO" format lived up to its name in the first test. The San Francisco-based brokerage touts OpenIPO as an egalitarian "Dutch auction" system that gives the little guy a fair shake.