MIDWEST
Unizan Financial Corp. of Canton, Ohio, has made Kim M. Taylor, the chief financial officer of its Unizan Bank, its own CFO as well.
Mr. Taylor came to Unizan in December from Huntington Bancshares Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, which plans to buy Unizan. He had been a business-line CFO at Huntington National Bank since early 2002.
His arrival at Unizan was a homecoming. From August 1996 to April 2002 he had been the CFO of BancFirst Ohio Corp. of Zanesville. UNB Corp. of Canton bought BancFirst in March 2002 and renamed itself Unizan.
Mr. Taylor continues to report to James H. Nicholson, Unizan's chief operating officer and executive vice president. Mr. Nicholson is also the bank's president and chief executive officer.
Huntington agreed in January 2004 to buy the $2.6 billion-asset Unizan for $587 million in stock. Regulatory issues halted the deal, but Huntington has said it will again seek regulatory approval once those issues are cleared up.
First Place Financial Corp. of Warren, Ohio, has hired Paul S. Musgrove as the chief financial officer of the company and its $2.5 billion-asset First Place Bank.
Mr. Musgrove, who was also named a corporate executive vice president at the bank, was a vice president and the director of finance at Ohio Savings Bank, a $13.8 billion-asset thrift in Cleveland. Earlier he had worked for Royal Bank of Canada: as assistant controller from 1996 to 2001; as corporate controller of RBC Centura Banks Inc. of Rocky Mount, N.C., from 2001 (when RBC bought Centura Banks Inc.) to 2002; and as RBC Centura's CFO from 2002 to 2004.
Ameriana Bancorp of New Castle, Ind., has hired Jerome J. Gassen as the president and chief executive officer of the company and its $428 million-asset Ameriana Bank and Trust.
Mr. Gassen had been the executive vice president of banking at Old National Bank of Evansville, Ind., from mid-2003 until January of this year. Before that he had been the president of the Old National Bancorp unit's northern region.
He joined Old National in 2000 when it bought American National Bank and Trust Co. of Muncie, Ind., whose president and chief operating officer he had been.
WESTFar East National Bank of Los Angeles has hired Kathleen Ross as the head of its retail banking group and an executive vice president and Eileen Lyon as its general counsel and a senior vice president.
Sinopac Financial Holdings Co. Ltd. of Taipei owns the $1.7 billion-asset bank.
Ms. Ross was the head of retail and commercial banking at Countrywide Bank, a division of Countrywide Financial Corp.'s Treasury Bank of Alexandria, Va.
Ms. Lyon was the general counsel and corporate secretary at Hawthorne Financial Corp. in California and its Hawthorne Savings until June, when Commercial Capital Corp. of Irvine, Calif., bought them.
