The year 2023 was especially cruel to regional banks in California. Repeated interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve exposed the poor bets and hubris of regional highfliers like Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. Those banks capsized, which sparked bank runs, which wiped shareholders out.

One regional bank, however, smoothly sailed on: East West Bank, helmed for more than 30 years by Dominic Ng, who champions the durable power of steady growth. “We’re prudent and cautious, but very entrepreneurial,” he said from his office at East West headquarters in Pasadena. “The way you win in banking is not through shortcuts. It’s a long game.”

The result has been accolades: No. 1 best-performing bank in its size category last year from S&P Global Market Intelligence and No. 1 performing bank in 2023 by trade publication Bank Director. The diversity of its board of directors — Latino, Asian, Black, female and LGBTQ+ all represented — has also won acclaim.

Steady profits enabled East West to become one of Los Angeles’ top civic benefactors. Ng has been especially active with the United Way of Greater Los Angeles for more than 25 years and is credited with championing a strategic change in direction to more effectively serve the city’s desperately poor, while persuading more of the city’s richest residents to pitch in.

“His leadership has transformed the bank, transformed philanthropy and what business leadership looks like in L.A.,” said Elise Buik, the United Way chapter’s chief executive.

Born to Chinese parents in Hong Kong in 1959, the youngest of six children, Ng has been chief executive of East West Bank since 1992 and expanded on the bank’s original mission of financing Chinese immigrants who in the 1970s found it difficult to qualify for loans through the usual channels. It’s now the largest publicly traded independent bank based in Southern California, serving an economically and ethnically diverse clientele. On the world stage, Ng serves as co-chair of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council.

Ng, 65, worries about the future of philanthropy in Los Angeles. He longs for the “good old days” when business chiefs didn’t think twice about pitching in to help the city’s less fortunate.

“Today, the pressure is on for [immediate] return to shareholders,” and people running companies have to respond to shareholders who seem to “care less every year” about civic responsibility.

More young, monied tech and finance hotshots would do well to take some cues from business leaders like Ng.

Cancer-fighting robots. AI-powered baby monitors. The future of American shipbuilding.

These are the kinds of startup ideas that get Mark Suster out of bed in the morning, into his Tesla, and down to the Santa Monica offices of Upfront, the venture capital firm he joined 16 years ago.

“There’s that old saying — the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed,” Suster said. “My job lets me see where the world’s going five years before the general population.”

Discover the changemakers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. This week we bring you The Money, a collection of bankers, political bundlers, philanthropists and others whose deep pockets give them their juice. Come back each Sunday for another installment.

But Suster, 56, didn’t become the face of the L.A. venture capital scene thanks to his day-to-day investing. He got there by throwing a party called the Upfront Summit.

Every year, Suster’s splashy tech conference takes over an iconic L.A. location. One year, it’s at the Rose Bowl. Another year, it’s at a retreat center high in the Santa Monica Mountains. There are zip lines, hot air balloons, and, among the talks with tech founders about software and product development, fireside chats with celebrities, politicians and authors (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Novak Djokovic graced the stage this year).

The razzle-dazzle is part of the draw, and Suster clearly relishes his role as emcee (“I was a theater kid — I still love going to the theater,” he said.)

But the real appeal comes down to cash. Suster’s strategic move was to invite not just venture capital investors, but the people who invest in venture capital investors. Called limited partners, these are the managers of pensions, sovereign wealth funds and other giant pools of money that want to tap into the tech market. By making sure they’re on the guest list, Suster has made the summit one of the easiest places in America for fellow venture capitalists to raise a new fund.

The summit loses Upfront money. When Suster started it in 2012, it cost around $300,000. In 2022, costs hit $2.3 million, Suster said, with a handful of sponsors chipping in to cut the losses. But throwing the premiere professional party in California comes with intangible benefits, like bringing in deals that would otherwise leave out Upfront and other L.A. funds and founders.

The 2024 party was a little scaled back, now that higher interest rates have throttled the fire hose of money that went into venture capital during the last decade. But Suster says that he welcomes the less frothy environment. “I’m having a lot more fun now,” he said, investing in founders “looking to build real businesses.”

He sits in a conspicuous baseline seat, where he cheers like nobody’s watching.

The large balding man in long sleeves roars with every splashed basket, gestures with every scintillating pass, face reddening, arms flailing, celebrating so hard he once ripped a hole in his dress shirt.

He could be any die-hard Clippers fan, with one exception.

He owns the team.

Steve Ballmer is the perfect symbol of the power of Hollywood hope, the strength of California dreaming and the resilience of those who come here searching for a miracle.

Ranking eighth on the Forbes 500 list with an estimated net worth north of $120 billion, Ballmer could afford to buy any sports team in any league.

He chose to buy the Clippers, spending $2 billion in 2014 for a perennial loser and one of five teams to never reach the NBA Finals.

“A team comes up for sale in a city I love that’s near me?” said Ballmer, 68, a former Microsoft executive who lives in Washington state. “You say, ‘OK, but it’s the Clippers,’ and my theory is, you can do anything if you put your mind to it.”

As the richest owner in North American professional sports, he had the wealth and influence to move the bedraggled franchise to a city far away from the big brother Lakers, perhaps even into his adopted hometown of Seattle.

Yet he doubled down and not only kept the Clippers in town but spent another $2 billion to build his own arena: the glitzy Intuit Dome, which is scheduled to open in October in Inglewood.

“It was clear to me, we had to have our own home, our own identity,” Ballmer said.

Cynics would describe his ownership of the Clippers as charity work, but his real philanthropy has had an even larger impact in the region, with his Ballmer Group investing hundreds of millions of dollars in everything from inner-city businesses to the renovation of 500 Clipper Community Courts in diverse pockets of the city.

“Impacting kids is the kind of thing that pulls at my heart,” Ballmer said. “A fan will tell me that he drove past a Clipper court and I’ll think, that’s really, really, really cool.”

Ballmer is accessible, generous and, most of all, the head cheerleader for a drowned-out swath of a Lakers-owned city.

“I love our die-hard fans,” he said. “I love the culture of c’mon, we have a chip on our shoulder, we’ve got something to prove, we’ve never done it before, c’mon!”

It is a Thursday afternoon early in the 2023-24 NBA season and Steve Ballmer is shouting into the phone, because of course he is, the sound of undying faith, the voice of a true believer, c’mon!