FirstMerit Corp. Names Executive

MIDWEST

FirstMerit Corp., Akron, Ohio, has promoted the managing officers of two banks-Richard G. Norton and Brad L. Tolstedt-to chief executive officer.

Mr. Norton remains president of FirstMerit Bank Akron, and Mr. Tolstedt got that title at FirstMerit Bank Cleveland, where he was executive vice president.

Mr. Norton joined FirstMerit Corp. in 1969 and was named head of training and development in 1976, a commercial loan officer in 1983, and an executive vice president and senior lender in 1995.

Mr. Tolstedt joined FirstMerit Cleveland in 1995 as a senior vice president of business banking. He had worked previously for Norwest Bank Nebraska.

FirstMerit also hired Robert Binnie as its vice president of systems development. He is responsible for the year-2000 conversion project and will manage 29 in-house employees and seven outsourced contracting resources for data-processing programming.

Until last May, Mr. Binnie was a programming manager for cash management applications at KeyCorp in Cleveland. He had held similar responsibilities since 1992 at a KeyCorp precursor, Society Corp.

Earlier he held top programming jobs at Cleveland-based Transohio Savings Bank and National City Bank. And most recently he was the year-2000 project manager at Datacorp Consulting, which Cleveland-based Accustaff Inc. has acquired.

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