LaSalle Hires a Trust Exec to Help Beef Up Its Institutional Retirement

LaSalle National Bank has hired a onetime Northern Trust Corp. executive to help build its retirement services business for small and midsize companies.

Randall C. Hampton, 53, will fill a newly created post as executive vice president of institutional trust services. The job is part of a plan by LaSalle to build its institutional and personal trust businesses significantly.

Mr. Hampton, who is to begin work Jan. 2, will be responsible for developing services and increasing the number of LaSalle's retirement clients. LaSalle provides employee benefit plans to 177 companies but expects to double that total in the next three to four years, Mr. Hampton said.

"We could just do a good job working with our current commercial clients, but we're not limiting ourselves," Mr. Hampton said. "We're looking across the country."

The $15 billion-asset Chicago bank offers record keeping, investment services, and plan designs, primarily for small and midsize Midwest companies, but Mr. Hampton said LaSalle wants to be a "significant player" in the business. He declined to discuss revenues.

LaSalle's recruitment of Mr. Hampton and last year's hiring of Bruce Callow as executive vice president in charge of personal trust indicate the bank's desire to compete in both institutional and individual trust.

Mr. Callow joined in October 1996 from Stein Roe & Farnham Inc., a small Chicago investment banking firm, where he was president of the investment counseling division. He had previously worked at Northern Trust and Continental Bank Corp.

"The senior management of the bank is committed to putting together a team to develop and grow the trust business at LaSalle," Mr. Hampton said.

He will report to LaSalle vice chairman James Wynsma, as will Mr. Callow. Mr. Hampton had been vice chairman and director of marketing and sales at Ariel Capital Management Inc., a small Chicago asset manager, for the past three years. He retired last summer to work full-time for the nonprofit Centers for New Horizons, a housing development and community activist group in Chicago. He will continue as chairman of New Horizons, he said.

Before his job at Ariel, he had spent 28 years at Northern Trust, one of the largest institutional trust companies. He held a number of posts at Northern, his last as senior vice president and head of sales, marketing, and client relations for government and joint corporate-union managed pension funds.

LaSalle National Bank is a unit of ABN Amro Holding, Amsterdam.

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