In the Spotlight: Fleet Investment Services Chief

The survival instinct is strong among New England bankers, given the intense consolidation in the region over the past 10 years. But few have survived better than Gunnar S. Overstrom.

Now a vice chairman at Fleet Financial Group in Boston, Mr. Overstrom is one of only two top executives who remain from the former Shawmut National Corp., which Fleet acquired in 1996.

Amid a corporate restructuring, Mr. Overstrom, 55, was tapped in April to join Fleet's office of the chairman and head up the $83.5 billion-asset company's growing investment services unit.

Reporting to Terrence Murray, who is Fleet's chairman and chief executive officer, Mr. Overstrom was handed a jigsaw puzzle of businesses that soon would grow even more complicated.

His new role overseeing Fleet's investment services will bring Mr. Overstrom to the attention of Wall Street for the first time. A soft-spoken longtime banker with experience in retail and commercial services, Mr. Overstrom has achieved the spotlight, for the most part without much ado.

"Shawmut was not a survivor, but Overstrom was," said Michael Mayo, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston. "I don't get the sense that he was well known outside the bank, largely because he had been so involved in internal issues."

He takes the helm of Fleet Investment Advisors, the bank's money management unit and the core around which the bank's investment services are built, just as Mr. Murray has taken bold steps to put Fleet more squarely into contention with leading nonbanks in the field.

In August of this year, Fleet agreed to buy Portland, Ore.-based Columbia Management Co. and its $22 billion in mutual fund assets managed for institutional and retail investors.

Then, one month later, Fleet announced it would purchase Quick & Reilly Group, a New York discount brokerage, clearing house, and New York Stock Exchange specialist.

The deal, set to close in the first quarter, will add a dimension to the bank's services-a ready-made national distribution network for the Columbia and Fleet's Galaxy mutual funds, Mr. Overstrom said.

With 116 offices in 33 states, Quick & Reilly will absorb Fleet's corps of investment sales representatives, open new satellite offices and train the branch-based brokers to sell individual equity and fixed income securities.

Mr. Overstrom said Fleet has sought to improve business through "more products, more distribution, and better scale."

Eventually, Fleet may apply to create a registered investment advisory subsidiary to house the Quick & Reilly business, Mr. Overstrom said. Further acquisitions are possible. "There are still smaller brokerages that are opportunities," said Mr. Overstrom.

His task is soon to become more difficult, because Fleet intends to run Columbia and Quick & Reilly as stand-alone enterprises, under their current names with their management teams intact.

Mr. Overstrom will have to manage cultural clashes, analysts said.

"It'll be no small task to take all of those components and make them work harmoniously," said Mr. Mayo. "The risks can't be taken for granted."

Analysts said the acquisitions have one disadvantage-they lack big expense savings. But Quick & Reilly's nationally recognized brand could prove to be more important as a generator of new business.

"Fleet is paying for that, and they don't want to jeopardize that," said Nancy Bush, an analyst at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.

Blending executive teams from different backgrounds in financial services is not new to Mr. Overstrom, who is steadily building experience hiring people from outside of banking.

Robert L. Ash, managing director in charge of Fleet Investment Services, joined in the spring from Warren Management Consultants, a firm that advises banks on retail distribution strategies.

Doris P. Meister came aboard last month as managing director in charge of private banking. She jumped to the bank from AEW Capital Management, a Boston real estate investment firm. Before that, she was chief operating officer of Christie's, an auction house.

"We needed people who can execute, and we went out and took the best in the marketplace to do the job," Mr. Overstrom said.

Perhaps Mr. Overstrom is sympathetic to such hires because he also did not originally plan to be a banker.

Schooled in economics and finance, Mr. Overstrom went to law school and passed the Massachusetts bar exam before deciding the legal profession was not for him.

His early career included stints at a Hartford-based investment bank and a job at Travelers Insurance Co.

His banking career began in 1975, when he joined Hartford National Corp. as vice president for financial planning.

By 1979, he had worked his way up to chief financial officer of the bank, which merged with Connecticut National Bank in 1982. When Connecticut National merged with Shawmut in 1988, Mr. Overstrom became chief executive officer of the Connecticut unit of the combined bank.

In 1992, at the height of the New England banking crisis, Mr. Overstrom became president and chief operating officer of Shawmut National Corp. Together with Shawmut chairman and chief executive officer, Joel B. Alvord, Mr. Overstrom won plaudits from analysts for helping to turn the bank around.

Retail investment services became an important strategy for growth during that period, Mr. Overstrom said. Although the economy in Connecticut had created a poor environment for lending, the state's per-capita income- one of the highest in the nation-made conditions good for developing brokerage clients.

Mr. Overstrom said that from his experience at Shawmut he learned a lesson that is relevant today.

"We saw very early on the changing needs of our customers," Mr. Overstrom said. "They were getting more sophisticated, and the demographics of the market were right." u

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