Oct. 17--If Citizens Business Bank seems new to you, it might be more familiar than you think.

The $6.5 billion institution that agreed to acquire Bakersfield's failed San Joaquin Bank has deep ties to the Southern California dairy industry and is no stranger to the Central Valley.

The board's longtime chairman, for example, is George Borba Sr.

George Sr.'s son and his nephew, James, are the cousins whose late-'90s legal battle to build twin megadairies south of Taft Highway changed Bakersfield's landscape and paved the way for other Chino-area dairymen to move north.

Another familiar face is Harold Hanson, a Bakersfield City Councilmember who still works at Citizens' 9100 Ming Ave. branch after helping open it in late 2001.

Hanson said Friday night he'd just returned from one of the former San Joaquin branches, where he'd been sent to reassure employees and tell them about the company.

"It's a shock," he said, referring to the impact a failure has on staffers.

Hanson said it's good for Bakersfield that Citizens chose to acquire San Joaquin. If a buyer doesn't step up, he said, a failed bank's operations shut down altogether, leaving offices empty and workers without jobs.

How many workers will keep jobs is up to Citizens, said Terre Price, regional ombudsman for the FDIC.

Citizens is headquartered in Ontario, a city in the far southwestern corner of San Bernardino County, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. It first opened in 1974 as Chino Valley Bank -- a moniker that endures in the initials of its holding company, CVB Financial Corp.,

Richard Fanucchi, chief executive of Bakersfield-headquartered Mission Bank, said the failure was an "unfortunate set of circumstances for the bank shareholders," but that Citizens will "carry on the task San Joaquin was doing" as a business bank.

Friday's acquisition will boost Citizens' presence in Bakersfield from one branch to a half-dozen. The bank also has a McFarland site, which it acquired in 2003 through the purchase of a small Tulare County bank.

More than a dozen Citizens locations serve Central Valley locales such as Porterville, Tulare, Madera and Fresno.

Bank officials couldn't be reached for comment Friday night.

The company trades on Nasdaq under the symbol CVBF.

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