M&I’s President to Add CEO Title In Yearend Shift

Marshall & Ilsley Corp. has announced that its chairman, James B. Wigdale, will step down as the chief executive officer at yearend and that its president, Dennis J. Kuester, will succeed him in that role.

Mr. Kuester, 59, also succeeds Mr. Wigdale, effective immediately, as chairman and CEO of the Milwaukee company’s retail bank, M&I Marshall & Ilsley Bank, the company said late Thursday.

Mr. Wigdale, 65, will remain chairman of the $27.3 billion-asset holding company, and Mr. Kuester will remain its president.

In a telephone interview Friday morning, Mr. Wigdale, who started at Marshall & Ilsley in 1962, said the time was right for him to step down from the top post. “Dennis and I have been working as a team, and it was a logical time,” he said. The team is going to have a new leader.”

Mr. Kuester, who will take over the company’s day-to-day operations, said in the same interview that one thing he would focus on is a continuing effort to grow through acquisitions. In the third quarter M&I bought National City Bancorp in Minneapolis and 14 Arizona branches from Fifth Third Bank.

“In order to grow shareholder value, you have to have growth plans,” he said.

The $250 million acquisition of National City boosted M&I’s presence in Minneapolis, where a former Milwaukee rival, Firstar Corp., transplanted itself after buying U.S. Bancorp and adopting its name.

For M&I, the two deals came after a three-year absence from the merger game during which it watched other Wisconsin banking companies get bigger but used the industry’s consolidation to increase its own customer base. For example, it targeted customers in Minneapolis who defected from the new U.S. Bancorp.

Mr. Kuester began his M&I career in 1976 with M&I Data, a unit now known as Metavante Corp. In 1985 he became the unit’s president. Eight years later he became its chairman and CEO, posts he held until 1998.

He said he would continue to bounce ideas off Mr. Wigdale, under whom he has worked for 10 years, as he strives to strengthen the company’s asset base.

For his part, Mr. Wigdale said, “I will continue to help Dennis and be active in the company.”

Jason Goldberg, an analyst at Lehman Brothers, said he was not surprised that Mr. Kuester had been picked to take the helm. “Dennis has been the right-hand man for some time now. This is a planned succession.”

Mr. Kuester is inheriting a healthy situation at M&I, Mr. Goldberg said. “They have a clean credit model, and revenue growth is good,” he said. Mr. Wigdale “leaves behind a bank with one of the cleaner balance sheets.”

Thomas M. Bolger, the company’s chief credit officer and a senior vice president, was named president and a member of the bank unit’s board. Mr. Bolger and Mark Furlong, the company’s chief financial officer, were named executive vice presidents of Marshall & Ilsley Corp.

Mr. Bolger began his career at M&I in 1970. He joined the commercial banking group in 1979 and has been the company’s chief credit officer since 1995 and an executive vice president of the bank unit since 1997.

Before joining M&I this year, Mr. Furlong had been executive vice president and the chief financial officer of Old Kent Financial Corp., which Fifth Third Bancorp bought in June.

Mark Hogan has succeeded Mr. Bolger as a corporate senior vice president and chief credit officer. He joined M&I in 1977 and became a senior vice president and the retail bank’s chief credit officer in 1996.