Ex-Banker Alley Named Indiana Revenue Commissioner

The state of Indiana has tapped a former banker to help restore credibility to its beleaguered revenue department.

State budget director Adam Horst said Friday that Mike Alley, a former regional president at Fifth Third Bancorp, has been named the state's new revenue commissioner, replacing John Eckart, who resigned last week.

Eckart stepped down after it was revealed that his agency failed to distribute some $206 million in income tax revenue to the state's counties. The state blamed the error on a computer programming glitch. Late last year, the state also discovered that $320 million collected by the revenue department over a four-year period had never been transferred to the general fund.

The Indianapolis Business Journal reported the news of Alley's hiring on its website Friday.

Alley was president and chief executive of Fifth Third Bank of Central Indiana before retiring in 2002 to become a private investor. In 2008, he joined the board of Integra Bank in Evansville, Ind., and later became the bank's CEO when Michael Vea was demoted. Integra, though, was drowning in problem loans at the time and Alley was unable to raise the capital it needed to stay afloat. The bank failed last year and was taken over by rival Old National Bancorp (ONB).

Alley was most recently the chairman of Patriot Investments LLC, an Indianapolis firm that invests in early-stage growth companies.