Centrue Financial Corp. decided to make St. Louis its new home because its old one did not offer the same opportunity for growth.
Less than a year after it opened its first Missouri branch, the $1.4 billion-asset company said late Monday that it had moved its headquarters from Ottawa, Ill., to Missouri's second-largest city, about 240 miles away.
Chief executive officer Thomas A. Daiber said the St. Louis region is Centrue's most promising growth market.
He pointed out that it is 10 times the size of its next-largest market and that Centrue's St. Louis loan portfolio is the company's largest by region.
In an interview Monday, Mr. Daiber said he expects the move to also raise Centrue's profile with investors and analysts. Currently no analysts cover Centrue and its stock is lightly traded.
The new address "allows us more visibility and recognition," the CEO said.
Mr. Daiber is no stranger to St. Louis; he had been the chief financial officer at Allegiant Bank before it was sold to National City Corp. in 2002.
Mr. Daiber joined what is now Centrue in 2003. In 2006, Centrue, then headquartered in Kankakee, Ill., was acquired by UnionBancorp Inc. of Ottawa, with the buyer taking the Centrue name and Mr. Daiber taking over as CEO.
Centrue now has a lending limit of $29 million and focuses on making commercial and commercial real estate loans to small to midsize businesses, Mr. Daiber said. Its 33 branches stretch from the Chicago suburbs to metropolitan St. Louis.
Centrue has branches in the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis but did not open its first branch in Missouri until June, when it bought a Missouri charter from what is now Hawthorn Bancshares Inc. Buying the charter allowed Centrue to convert its loan production office in Clayton, Mo., into a full-service branch. (Missouri law prohibits out-of-state banks from opening branches in the state without first acquiring a charter.)
Mr. Daiber said Centrue intends to add several more branches in the St. Louis area in the next few years and that he expects a second to open early next year.
Meanwhile, the company has been realigning its network in Illinois. In January it announced it was selling four branches in the state and closing three others so that it could "redeploy capital to its higher-growth and anchor markets."
Still, Mr. Daiber stressed that Centrue remains committed to its anchor markets in LaSalle and Kankakee counties in Illinois and said that its charter will remain in Illinois.
To raise its profile in St. Louis, Centrue plans to establish an advisory board of eight "substantial" business leaders in the city who will serve as ambassadors for the company, Mr. Daiber said.
Centrue opened the Missouri loan production office in September 2006, and in less than a year the office had brought in $100 million of loans.
Mr. Daiber attributed its loan-gathering success to its recruitment of a team of 12 bankers formerly with Allegiant Bank, which was one of St. Louis' largest local banks before it was acquired by National City. Centrue said its loans increased 14.4% last year, to $957.3 million, and Mr. Daiber said the growth was fueled largely by commercial real estate lending in St. Louis.
