With longtime Atlanta banker Gordon Teel at the helm, Georgian Bank has undergone immense changes.
In the year since Mr. Teel took over as Georgian's chairman and chief executive, its assets have increased nearly tenfold, to $625 million, its employee head count has nearly tripled, to 73, and it has entered two counties in the Atlanta suburbs.
Earnings at Georgian, which mostly serves businesses, are up as well. They topped $1 million in the third quarter, against a profit of $212,000 a year earlier.
Mr. Teel does not plan to slow the pace, even though he is taking the 3-year-old bank private. Within the next year it is scheduled to open four new branches that will replace four temporary ones, and plans to hire 60 more employees.
Much of the Powder Springs bank's growth has been fueled by a $50 million investment in September 2003 from a group headed by Mr. Teel, 60. Six months earlier Mr. Teel had sold the $1.6 billion-asset Bank of North Georgia, of which he was chairman and founder, to Synovus Financial Corp.
It also helped that when he came on board, he brought along $160 million of loans generated through his loan production company, G. Teel Enterprises, which no longer exists.
Seeking a new challenge after selling Bank of North Georgia, Mr. Teel said he considered starting a bank but decided it would take too much time and that investing in an existing one would be better. He picked Georgian because it was run by a former Synovus colleague, Kenneth L. Barber, and had a solid track record.
The holding company, Georgian Bancorp Inc., is public but its stock is very thinly traded. Mr. Teel wants to take it private through a reverse stock split that would get the number of shareholders below 300 and free Georgian from Securities and Exchange Commission reporting requirements.
"We looked at the effects of being a publicly held bank and tried to understand the benefits," he said. "But the cost and time attributed to being publicly held outweighed any benefits."
Walt Moeling, an attorney with Powell Goldstein Frazer & Murphy in Atlanta, said that with all of its other sources of capital, Georgian does not need to be public to grow into a multibillion-dollar company.
At midyear its core capital ratio was 13.43%, well above its peer group average for the same period, 9.09%. Georgian Bancorp plans to conduct a debt offering in the near future, Mr. Teel said, and current investors still have warrants for more stock that they can exercise.
"They have plenty sources of capital," Mr. Moeling said. "And since they only plan to grow de novo and not do acquisitions, they don't need their stock as a currency."
Mr. Teel said the bank does not intend to be all things to all people, but to provide services to a narrow and profitable sector, midsize businesses.
"We are trying very diligently to focus on the market segment of nonpublicly held businesses with credit needs in excess of what most community banks can offer, and those that are also frustrated with what large competitors offer," he said.
Georgian Bank's average loan is $2 million, and most of its customers' lending needs range up to $10 million, the CEO said.
Mr. Moeling said Georgian Bank has been able to attract well-connected loan officers as well as customers and investors. Lenders whose banks have been bought by regional institutions find it inviting, he said, because they can return to a community banking atmosphere while continuing to work with larger companies.
