Tag: Avenue Bank

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9 Banks I Bet People Will Be Talking About at Acquire or Be Acquired

I planned to write about a number of banks I was excited to see this weekend at AOBA.  But as Steve Jobs once shared “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” In this spirit, let me highlight nine banks that I anticipate our attendees will be talking about in Arizona at Bank Director’s annual M&A conference.

In a few minutes, I’ll hop an American flight to Phoenix for this year’s Acquire or Be Acquired Conference.  Before I depart the cold and slush of D.C. for some warmth and sun in the desert, this is my take on the banks I anticipate people talking about when we’re all together:

  • Bank of the West — and not just because their CEO is keynoting this year’s conference.  The bank, with more than 700 branches in the Midwest and Western United States, has long been a personal favorite of mine and competes in markets where many look for inspiration.
  • Bank of North Carolina — because they’ve been wheeling and dealing and are a great example of how an acquirer successfully integrates cultures (*yes, their CEO also speaks at AOBA this year on a CEO panel entitled Finding the Right Partners).
  • United Bank — having picked up a trophy franchise of their own in my hometown (another personal favorite of mine, Bank of Georgetown) they’ve made a number of interesting deals over the past few years and I bet have more on their mind.
  • BB&T — having dealt for Susquehanna in ’14 and National Penn in ‘15, it is fair to ask: who’s next?

By no means are these all of the banks that will come up in conversation; rather, those that are top of mind.

One final thought before hopping my flight west.  The recent volatility in the stock market may be impacting institutions considering a capital raise, IPO or acquisition — but this week’s deal pace is far different then at this time in recent years.  The patterns I’m beginning to see is a concentrated effort to get to over the $5Bn asset mark and into that sweetest of spots: the $5Bn to $50Bn asset class.  A point I’ll elaborate on in an upcoming post/video.

So if you are interested in following the conference conversations via social channels, I invite you to follow me on Twitter via @AlDominick, the host company, @BankDirector, and search & follow #AOBA16 to see what is being shared with (and by) our attendees.  Safe travels to those 930 men & women joining us this weekend!

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Does Anyone Want To Work At A Bank?

Admittedly, the question driving today’s title is not the easiest to answer.  Without the training programs once offered, without the cache of an Apple and without the stability of a career path, you might wonder why any smart, ambitious and talented professional would take a job in banking.  Surprised I’d write this from Chicago and Bank Director’s annual Bank Executive & Board Compensation conference?  Read on.  

A sunny day in Chicago
A sunny day in Chicago

As I start to write today’s piece, it strikes me that without the help of LinkedIn, I don’t immediately know a single person my age (37) that works for a traditional bank — let alone operates at an executive level.  This is a HUGE problem for the future when one considers the growing divide in public perceptions of banks with the actual business operations in place.  Look, I’m not throwing stones.  Heck, I would have loved to get into a management training program when I graduated from W&L in 1999.  Its just that almost every big bank that historically trained the “next generation” of bankers had shelved their programs.

While I don’t work directly for a financial institution, I am lucky to spend days like today finding inspiration from bank executives, board members and services providers.  Mostly, these are people who see the banking space as one that does need change, but does not deserve dismissal.  So as the Swissotel starts to fill with “traditional bankers,” I anticipate three big themes; namely, the recruitment, development and compensation of a leadership team and the workforce of the future.

In Terms of Recruitment…

If you subscribe to the idea that “tone from the top” is key for building a culture of success, take heed of our editor’s opinion.  Jack Milligan recently blogged on “The Bank Spot” that “the #1 best practice for a bank’s board of directors is to hire a high performance CEO.”  In his words:

Of all the things that boards do, this might be the most obvious – and yet it’s also the most important. A good CEO works closely with the board to develop a strategy that fits the bank’s market and has the potential to create a high level of profitability. They bring in good talent and do a good job of motivating and leading them. And they have the ability to execute the strategic plan and deliver what they said they will deliver. Having a high performance CEO doesn’t guarantee success, but I think it will be very hard to be a high performing bank without one.

In Terms of Development…

In my mind, having the right leader in place dramatically improves the attractiveness of an institution to potential employees.  Here, I look at what bankers like Ron Samuels and Kent Cleaver are doing in Nashville at Avenue Bank and Mike Fitzgerald at Bank of Georgetown in Washington, D.C.  Creating a culture where one is pushed to contribute to the bank’s growth seems obvious.  But I can tell you, putting people above products and financial profits isn’t always the easiest thing to do (right as it may be).  Developing talented executives takes both patience and confidence.  Indeed, one must be comfortable doing more than simply empowering others to be a team player.  Here, a passage from L. David Marquet’s (a retired Captain in the U.S. Navy) “Turn the Ship Around” bears quotation.  The premise: don’t empower, emancipate.

Emancipation is fundamentally different from empowerment.  With emancipation, we are recognizing the inherent genius, energy and creativity in all people, and allowing those talents to emerge.  We realize that we don’t have the power to give these talents to others, or ’empower’ them to use them, only the power to prevent them from coming out.

It might be easy in a highly regulated environment to see this logic and find excuses to it not applying to banking.  But if a submarine captain can transform one of the worst performing boats into one of the most combat-effective submarines, perhaps these words might be re-read.

In Terms of Compensation…

Not to throw a wet blanket on the last two points, but as our team found in a recent survey, bank boards recognize the need to tie compensation to the performance of the bank in the long term, yet they continue to struggle with how to get the pieces in place to attract and reward the best leaders to meet the institution’s strategic goals.  So I find it particularly interesting that less than half of the banks we surveyed tie CEO pay to the strategic plan or corporate goals, and more than one-quarter of respondents say that CEO compensation is not linked to the performance of the bank.

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I’m checking back in tomorrow from the conference.  If you’re on Twitter and interested in the conversation, feel free to follow @BankDirector, @AlDominick and #BDComp14.

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Know Your Tribe

So… I initially planned to dive into interest rate risk this morning. Prevalent in most M&A conversations taking place in bank boardrooms today, I thought to focus on banks working to protect their equity value as interest rates rise. However, in reviewing the outline for today’s piece, I realized a different kind of risk inspired me: the risk of becoming something you are not.  While I do anticipate posting a piece on interest rate risk in the near future, today’s column parallels the thoughts of Seth Godin.  Specifically, a blog he authored this week entitled “In Search of Meaningful.”

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In his piece, Seth looks at online media and how “people have been transfixed by scale, by numbers, by rankings… how many eyeballs, how big is the audience, what’s the pass along, how many likes, friends, followers, how many hits?  You cannot win this game and I want to persuade you… to stop trying.”  It strikes me that he could just as well be writing about financial institutions competing for relevance in today’s competitive and crowded environment.  While I’ve linked to his post above, see if you follow my logic based on this representative quote:

It’s no longer possible to become important to everyone, not in a reliable, scalable way… But it is possible to become important to a very-small everyone, to a connected tribe that cares about this voice or that story or this particular point of view. It’s still possible to become meaningful, meaningful if you don’t get short-term greedy about any particular moment of mass, betting on the long run instead.

Over the past six months, I have been fortunate to hear how numerous bank CEOs and Chairmen plan to position their institutions for long-term growth.  As I process Godin’s perspective, let me pay his perspectives forward with three of my own specific to community banks:

#1 – You Don’t Have To Be BIG To Be Successful

By this I mean smarts trumps size any day of the week.  While more banks put their liquidity to work, fierce competition puts pressures on rates and elevates risk.  While easy to frame the dynamics of our industry in terms of asset size, competing for business today is more of a “smart vs. stupid” story than a “big vs. small” one.

#2 – You Don’t Have To Be Everywhere

Nor can you be — so stick to what you know best.  I know that margin compression and an extra helping of regulatory burden means times couldn’t be more challenging for growth in community or regional banking.  But that doesn’t mean you have to be all things to all people.  Case-in-point, I was lucky to spend some time with Burke & Herbert Bank’s CEO in Northern Virginia earlier this week.  As they say, “the world has changed quite a bit since 1852 (*the year the bank opened its doors) – that you may be conducting most of your life from your computer, smartphone and/or whatchamajiggy. That’s why we constantly adapt to the way you live and bank.”  Today Burke & Herbert Bank has more than $2 billion in assets and 25 branches throughout Northern Virginia.  Still, they remain a neighborhood bank, choosing to “stay local” as Virginia’s oldest bank.

#3 – You Don’t Have To Do What Everyone Else Does

As Godin writes, the “problem with generic is that it’s easy go as well as easy come.”  Just because USAA rolls out a new mobile offering doesn’t mean you need to — and if BofA decides to reprice a product, can you really compete with them on price?  So which community banks are doing it right in my opinion?  Well, if you’re in Nashville and focused on the medical and music & entertainment industries you probably know Avenue Bank, if you’re a business in the Pacific Northwest, you most likely work with (or at least respect) Banner Bank.  And if you are in the oil and gas business in Texas, First Financial is a big player.  The common thread that binds these three banks together: they have a laser-like focus on their ideal customer base.

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To comment on this piece, click on the green circle with the white plus (+) sign on the bottom right. If you are on twitter, I’m @aldominick. Aloha Friday!

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A grown up swinging town

San Francisco, CA

I spent the last few days in San Francisco meeting with various companies (think BlackRock, Fortress, Raymond James, Pillsbury, Manatt Phelps, etc.).  Those conversations caught me up on various trends impacting banks on our west coast. As I do each Friday, what follows are three things I heard, read and learned this week — with a big nod towards the bear republic.  Oh yes, thanks to old blue eyes for inspiring today’s title.  Sinatra certainly knew what he was talking about when it came to the bay area.

(1) Every bank has a story, and the old Farmers National Gold Bank (aka the Bank of the West) certainly has a rich one.  Begun in 1874, it was one of just ten banks nationwide authorized to issue paper currency backed by gold reserves.  Long a favorite of mine thanks to an academic / St Louis connection with their CEO, I had the opportunity to sit down with one of their board members on Tuesday and hear more about the $60Bn+ subsidiary of BNP Paribas.  As I reflect on that conversation, it strikes me that the bank’s growth reflects smart credit underwriting, a diversified loan portfolio and careful risk management. Yes, there have been strategic acquisitions (for example, United California Bank in ‘02, Community First Bank in Fargo in ’04 and Commercial Federal Bank in Omaha in ’05); however, their growth has been more organic of late — fitting for a “community bank” that has grown to more than 700 branch banking and commercial office locations in 19 Western and Midwestern states.  While their geographic footprint continues to grow, take a look at their social media presence. In my opinion, it’s one of the best in the banking space.

(2) From Bank of the West to US Bancorp, First Republic to BofA, bank branches dominate the streets of San Francisco.  As competition for business intensifies, I thought back to an article written by Robin Sidel (Regulatory Move Inhibits Bank Deals) that ran in last week’s Wall Street Journal.  I’m a big fan of her writing, and found myself re-reading her piece on a move by regulators “that put the biggest bank merger of 2012 on ice (and) is sending a chill through midsize financial institutions.”  Her story focuses on M&T, the nation’s 16th-largest bank (and like Bank of the West, operates more than 700 branches) and its $3.8 billion purchase of Hudson City Bancorp.  According to Robin, the deal that was announced last August is on hold after the Federal Reserve raised concerns about M&T’s anti-money-laundering program.  The fallout? Since the Fed’s decision, CEOs of other regional banks “have shelved internal discussions about potential transactions.”  For those interested in bank M&A, this article comes highly recommended.

(3) So if certain deals aren’t going to be considered (let alone closed), it naturally begs the question about how how and where banks can add new customers and increase “share of wallet” to improve profitability.  I brought this up in a conversation with Microsoft on Wednesday and found myself nodding in agreement that financial institutions should “audit their customer knowledge capabilities” to provide an optimal experience.  “Customer centricity” is a big focus for the tech giant, and it is interesting to consider how things like marketing, credit management and compliance might benefit from a well-designed strategy for managing customer knowledge.  I know some smaller banks are doing this (Avenue Bank in Nashville comes to mind) and I’m curious to hear how others might be taking advantage of tools and techniques to out-smart the BofA’s of the world.  If you know of some interesting stories, please feel free to weigh in below.

Aloha Friday!

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In the spirit of a Friday Follow

In the spirit of Twitter’s #FridayFollow, here are three stories related to the financial community that I read/watched/heard this week:

(#1) If you were at Bank Director’s 19th annual Acquire or Be Acquired conference last month, you heard that declining net interest margins, loan growth and regulatory challenges are the top concerns for banking leaders. In the following video, Grant Thornton’s Nichole Jordan discusses these concerns and provides insight into what bank executives and members of a board might do about them.

 

(#2) While I live in Washington D.C., our company considers Nashville home. In the shadows of Union Station, Avenue Bank maintains its oh-so-cool headquarters. I met with our “neighbor’s” President & COO yesterday afternoon and wound up talking about quite a few things. SEC sports, the upcoming Masters, branding (that’s their hummingbird below) and gasp(!), even a bit of banking.

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When I asked if he’d read this cover story in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal (“Business Loans Flood the Market“) about more banks competing for lending opportunities, he said he hadn’t. But, he did have good reason: he’d been talking about that very thing in Knoxville (at UT’s business school) the night before. While a subscription is required, the story lays out how banks are putting “their liquidity to work, but added competition puts pressure on rates and elevates risk.”

(#3) Finally, I receive a number of insightful research reports and newsletters. One of the better ones, IMHO, comes from Clark Street Capital. Each week, the Chicago-based firm shares its perspectives on banking, real estate, and the debt and loan sale markets. Worth a sign up.

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