Unlike most of the estimated 3,000 Angelenos who packed L.A. Live’s Nokia Plaza last week to watch President Obama’s inauguration on the JumboTron, Richard Yates is a plaza regular.

Yates, senior vice president of Acco Engineered Systems in Glendale, oversees installation of ventilation systems at most of the new buildings sprouting up in the downtown office-entertainment campus. His current project: the Ritz-Carlton/JW Marriott hotel complex set to open in 2010.

Yates often enjoys a quiet lunch in the plaza, but not Jan. 20. City Councilmember Jan Perry worked with L.A. Live developer AEG to organize what was billed as the city’s largest inauguration watch party, including a program of live entertainment.

“This has been so awesome you just get caught up in the energy of all the people here in the plaza,” said Yates.

But he doesn’t envy the task ahead for the 44th U.S. president. “I wouldn’t want his job.”

In Good Company

Larry Post was surprised recently when he got a phone call from Institutional Investor News.

“They called up and said they wanted my picture and I said, ‘What for?'” Post recalls. “They said I won this award and I said, ‘How much?'”

It was no joke; he didn’t have to give any money and didn’t get any money. He was told that the small investment firm he founded in Brentwood in 1992, Post Advisory Group, had been named a finalist for the publication’s Bond Manager of the Year award. Also surprising, he said, was that the other two finalists for the national award were behemoth firms headquartered here in Southern California: downtown L.A.-based TCW Group Inc. and Newport Beach-based Pimco LLC.

So how does Post feel about his chances to win the award, which will be announced in March?

“I’m sure we’re a long shot but I’m just honored to be in their company,” he said.

Staff reporters Deborah Crowe and Richard Clough contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].