Joe Evans, the chairman and CEO of State Bank Financial Corp., better hope there's no Sports Illustrated-like jinx associated with Bank Director magazine.
Evans wasn't on the cover, but the Atlanta bank ranked No. 1 on the magazine's 2011 Bank Performance Scorecard in its third-quarter issue. For the scorecard, experts crunched numbers on a wide range of data points to gauge the banks' profitability, capital and asset quality. The lower the combined score, the better.
State Bank received a score of 35; First Financial Bankshares Inc. of Abilene, Texas, was second with a score of 53.5 and City Holding Co. of Charleston, W. Va., was third (54). The last bank on the list of 150 had a score of 592.
Evans admitted some surprise.
"It doesn't surprise me we would have fared well, but anytime you come out on top of such a large universe [of banks], something would be wrong with me if I wasn't blown away," Evans said in an interview.
State Bank has bought five failed banks. He attributed the ranking to the $300 million private placement in 2009 that bolstered the bank's capital ratios and a balance sheet strengthened by generous loss-sharing agreements with the FDIC, among other things.
Evans insists that the recognition did not add pressure. Like a good football coach, he'll keep his "mind on the field and out of the papers," he said. "I'm not doing anything different today than I was doing a week ago. I'm just trying to run a good bank."
