WEST
Metro Commerce Bank in San Rafael, Calif. has hired Helena R. Marsh as the San Rafael branch manager and a vice president.
She succeeded Larry Tidwell, who was named manager of the bank's construction lending division.
Ms. Marsh held a similar job at Luther Burbank Savings, a Santa Rosa savings and loan association. She has 30 years of banking experience.
Metro Commerce, a subsidiary of MCB Financial Corp. in San Rafael, has $216 million of assets.
Mid-State Bank in Arroyo Grande, Calif., has hired Paul Mistele as the commercial credit administrator for the South Coast region - Ventura and southern Santa Barbara counties.He was also named a senior vice president of the $1.4 billion-asset unit of Mid-State Bancshares in Arroyo Grande. He reports to Thomas Reese, an executive vice president and the bank's chief credit officer.
Mr. Mistele was the western regional executive for three years at RMA, the Philadelphia-based trade association of bank loan and credit officers (which, until June 2000, was called Robert Morris Associates). Before that he had been a credit administrator for two and a half years at Santa Barbara Bank and Trust, a subsidiary of Pacific Capital Bancorp of Santa Barbara.
Still earlier he had been the senior loan officer and a loan administrator at Bank of A. Levy in Ventura, Calif., where he began his 26-year banking career. (First Interstate Bank of California bought it in 1995. A year later Wells Fargo & Co. bought First Interstate Bancorp of Los Angeles.)
MIDDLE ATLANTICGreat American Federal, a Pittsburgh savings and loan association, has hired Richard K. Wiethorn as the managing director of its newly created wealth management subsidiary, GA Financial Strategies LLC.
Mr. Wiethorn was a client development officer specializing in wealth management investment and trust services at PNC Bank. Before that he had been a trust business development officer at Century National Bank and Trust Co. in Rochester, Pa. (Sky Financial Group Inc. in Bowling Green, Ohio, bought Century Financial Corp. in 1998.) Still earlier he had worked at the Cleveland-based National City Bank.
He has 15 years of financial services industry experience.
Great American Federal has $870 million of assets.
F&M Bancorp in Frederick, Md., has hired John J. Joback as the chief information officer and a senior vice president of its principal subsidiary, the $1.5 billion-asset Farmers and Mechanics Bank.
He succeeded Alice Stonebreaker, who retired.
Mr. Joback was the chief information officer and chief operations officer for a year at Net Express Bank, an Internet start-up in Silver Spring, Md., until it shut down this year.
Before that he had been a principal information technology consultant at IBM Global Services, where he worked for nine months. Still earlier he had been the president and chief information officer of First Virginia Services Inc., a Falls Church unit of First Virginia Banks Inc., where he worked for 23 years.
F&M has $1.8 billion of assets.
MIDWESTArea Bancshares Corp. in Owensboro, Ky., has named William W. James its chief loan administrator and a senior vice president of the company.
Mr. James had been the president of the Glasgow region for its Area Bank since 1986. He has 28 years of banking experience in Glasgow.
Tommy K. Ross has succeeded Mr. James as the Glasgow president of Area Bank. Mr. Ross was an executive vice president and the Glasgow chief lending officer at the bank, where he has worked since 1997.
Area Bancshares has $2.7 billion of assets.
SOUTHEASTRaymond James Bank in St. Petersburg, Fla., has hired Carolyn Briggs as the loan counselor team leader.
Ms. Briggs was a district mortgage sales manager at Merrill Lynch & Co. She has 10 years of banking and financial services experience.
Raymond James Bank, a subsidiary of Raymond James Financial Inc., has $875 million of assets.
