J. William Henry has been promoted to president of First National of Nebraska, the $9 million-asset holding company for First National Bank of Omaha.
He succeeded Bruce Lauritzen, who remains chairman of both.
Mr. Henry was the bank and holding company executive vice president in charge of retail banking, corporate and government affairs, marketing and facilities. He will not keep his responsibilities in the bank.
He joined the company in 1964.
First National Bank also promoted Dennis A. O'Neal and Elias J. Eliopoulos to the presidencies of its newly created consumer banking and corporate banking groups.
Mr. O'Neal will head consumer banking, which includes credit card activities, retail banking, First National's Circle One Financial Services, and its Investment One.
He was executive vice president in charge of commercial lending. He joined the company in 1981.
Mr. Eliopoulos will head corporate banking, which includes commercial banking, correspondent and agricultural lending, private banking, commercial real estate, leasing, trust, and the institutional sales unit of the investment department.
He was an executive vice president at the bank and president of its First of Omaha Merchant Processing and First Bankcard Center. He joined the company in 1969.
MIDWESTStar Financial Bank in Anderson, Ind., has hired Lisa A. Grote as internal communications director, a newly created post.
The job includes responsibility for a newsletter and management of the employee intranet at the $1 billion-asset bank.
Ms. Grote came from OSV Publishing Inc. in Huntington, Ind. She will work out of the Fort Wayne office and report to Sherri Miller, senior vice president of strategic development at the Star Financial Group subsidiary.
MIDDLE ATLANTICHilltop Community Bank in Summit, N.J., a February start-up with $13 million of assets, has hired Robert L. Bowlby, Louise C. Hall, and Ronald F. Severino as vice presidents.
Mr. Bowlby will be a branch manager. He came from the Ramapo Bank in Wayne, which Valley National Bank of Passaic bought last June. He has 26 years of banking experience.
Ms. Hall will work as an administrator and as the Community Reinvestment Act officer. She came from Summit Bank, for which she had worked 15 years.
Mr. Severino will be in charge of commercial and consumer lending; he is the bank's first commercial lending officer.
Mr. Severino was an officer at Ramapo Bank and earlier a commercial lender and branch manager for First Fidelity Bank in Newark, whose parent company First Union Corp. bought in 1998.
He has 27 years of banking experience.
WESTSanwa Bank in Los Angeles has hired Robert Bannon as chief investment officer and head of the wealth management division's investment management department.
He succeeds Richard Weiss, who went to City National Bank in Beverly Hills.
Mr. Bannon was managing director for Analytic Investors Inc. in Los Angeles, where he was in charge of research, product management, and client servicing.
Earlier he was a fixed-income strategist at Idea, a financial marketing research firm in New York.
Before that he was a financial economist at Security Pacific National Bank, a predecessor to Bank of America in Los Angeles. He has 15 years of investment management experience.
Sanwa, with $9.2 billion of assets, is a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sanwa Bank Ltd.
