Enterprise Financial Service Corp. of Clayton, Mo., has hired two top executives from a former leader in the St. Louis banking market in a bid to become a leading player in that market.
Enterprise appointed Peter F. Benoist as the chairman and chief executive officer of its $787.5 million-asset banking division. Mr. Benoist logged 13 years at Mark Twain Bancshares Inc., which Mercantile Bancorp bought in 1997 for $855 million. (Firstar Corp., now U.S. Bancorp, bought Mercantile in 1999.)
Most recently Mr. Benoist was the executive director of the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance, a nonprofit organization in St. Louis.
Enterprise picked another Mark Twain alumnus, Kevin C. Eichner, to be its president and CEO. He succeeded Fred H. Eller, a co-founder of Enterpise, who will remain on its board and will move to Denver to develop business opportunities there for the company.
While both Mr. Benoist and Mr. Eller said they would apply the lessons they learned at $3.1 billion-asset Mark Twain, they insisted that Enterprise will not become a replica of their former employer.
"We very specifically have said to people this is not Mark Twain II," Mr. Eichner said. "We are not a retail franchise. Mark Twain had a strong retail franchise."
Instead, Enterprise's goal is to become a one-stop financial services provider for small businesses in St. Louis and Kansas City, Mr. Eichner said.
It plans to target professional services companies, such as accounting or law firms with around $2 million of annual revenues, as well as small manufacturers and real estate companies.
Enterprise has been developing its four-year-old trust department, which now has almost $900 million of assets under management, and the company plans to use that department in connection with its commercial banking operations to provide a full range of services to businesses and their owners and associates.
Mr. Benoist, who has lived and worked in St. Louis his entire life, said that there is room in the St. Louis market for a banking company with Enterprise's strategy. However, Juli Niemann, an analyst with RT Jones Capital Equities Inc. of St. Louis, said that Enterprise will face steep competition from a number of other community banking companies that are focusing on middle-market businesses.
According to Mr. Eichner, that is where Enterprise's Mark Twain connection should come in handy.
Mark Twain was known for giving its bankers a lot of autonomy, and Mr. Eichner plans to do the same at Enterprise. He says he plans to hire seasoned bankers who under different circumstances might have started their own banks, and then give them a free rein to work.
"Our growth strategy is to enfranchise people who could do their own deals but would prefer to do a deal with us," because of Enterprise's capital and resources, he said.
As an example, he pointed to Enterprise's Kansas City operation, which is headed by another Mark Twain alumnus, Jack Sutherland, whom Mr. Eichner described as a "marquee name" in that city.
Joseph A. Stieven, the director of financial institutions research at Stifel, Nicolaus, & Co. in St. Louis, said that Mr. Benoist has a similar reputation in St. Louis. "Peter is a real operator who understands all aspects of the business."
