The recently concluded Sundance Film Festival wasn’t just for A-list celebrities and entertainment execs. L.A. bankers and lawyers, among others, also got to go.
“Sundance is an excuse to go skiing, and at the same time meet with clients from all over the United States who come to Sundance to enjoy the film festival,” said entertainment lawyer P. John Burke, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP in Los Angeles.
Burke didn’t spend all his time in Park City, Utah, shushing down the slopes. He organized a 20-person dinner at Italian eatery Ghidotti’s, chatting up executives from Comerica Bank, Citibank, City National Bank, Union Bank, and L.A. film financing companies Screen Capital International and Endgame Entertainment.
“It’s a good place to go and see people in a relaxed, nice environment.”
Casden Appointment
Just before he left office, President Bush appointed local billionaire Alan Casden to a prominent post one that meshes with the real estate developer’s support of Jewish causes.
Casden, chief executive of Casden Properties, was appointed last month to serve on the Holocaust Memorial Council, which oversees the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
Casden was the longtime co-chairman of L.A.’s Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization.
The five-year council appointment was made Jan. 6.
“This is very important to me because of my background and commitment to the Simon Wiesenthal Center,” Casden said in an e-mail.
The developer has been abroad the last two weeks first in Israel to tend to a condo tower he is building in Tel Aviv and later in Paris for more business and a little R & R.;
Ready to Race
For Victor and Tamara Jih, “sibling rivalry” has a new meaning.
The attorneys are a brother-and-sister team on the new season of “The Amazing Race” on CBS beginning Feb. 15.
“Being brother and sister, we know each other really well,” said Victor Jih, 35, a partner who practices business litigation in the Century City office of O’Melveny & Myers LLP.
However, there are differences. Victor said he got a sense of that when the two went to the Olympics in Beijing last summer.
“It made me realize we have very different approaches to how we travel and live life,” he said.
Tamara Jih, 27, is an associate with litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges LLP in San Francisco.
Still, he figures their experiences as attorneys helped them in competition.
“Both of us have worked in extreme circumstances,” he said, “producing high-quality work with very little sleep.”
Staff reporters Alexa Hyland, Daniel Miller and Maya Meinert contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
