Meet & Greet

Hometown Industry

Bank of Georgetown has established a government-contract lending division and has hired Jeffrey Satterly to run it. The timing may have been inauspicious-the government shutdown started a day after the bank's announcement-but perhaps the bad omen will be trumped by experience. Satterly was a nuclear missiles analyst in the U.S. Air Force who switched to banking nearly 30 years ago after getting his MBA at Washington University in St. Louis. He has mainly focused on asset-based lending and acquisition financing, and before joining D.C.-based Bank of Georgetown managed the government-contract lending division of Virginia Commerce Bank.

 

Where Else? Filmmaker Goes Online To Fund Future-of-Money Series

Documentary filmmaker Heather Schlegel is a true-blue futurist-the kind of early adopter who books vacation spots via AirbnB and hitches rides around town with peer-to-peer car service Lyft. So when she set out to make "The Future of Money," a television series about how technology is transforming financial services, it was only natural that she turned to the crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to get financing for the project. Schlegel's previous works "Fly Me to the Moon" and "Flowers for Grandma" were produced in partnership with the SWIFT offshoot Innotribe. "The Future of Money" will outline high-tech visions for areas such as banking, bartering, payments and lending. Schlegel says she hopes to show audiences that "these are futures they'd want to live in."

 

Still Going Strong

If you ever need to argue against a mandatory retirement age, Bram Goldsmith might be able to help your case.

Goldsmith, who turned 90 this year, stepped down Oct. 1 as chairman of City National Corp. in Los Angeles. However, he will stay on as chairman emeritus and will continue to work full time at the $27.4 billion-asset company as part of the senior management team.

"City National has been-and will continue to be-a huge part of my life, and I know its best days are still to come," says Goldsmith, whose star-studded stories from the company's history include ones about Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson. (A predecessor famously helped Sinatra with fast cash to use for ransom after his son was kidnapped, and Jackson partied in the company's vault.)

Goldsmith, the son-in-law of a City National founder, joined the board in 1964 and served as CEO from 1975 to 1995. His son, Russell, who has been CEO since then, now has succeeded his dad as chairman, too.

 

The Chief Risk Officer

Wells Fargo's Michael Loughlin has been elected chairman of the Risk Management Association, for a one-year term that began in September. Loughlin is chief risk officer at Wells, where he has worked since 1986. The RMA also elected a new vice chair, Nancy Foster, chief risk officer at Park Sterling Corp. in Charlotte, N.C.; and announced three-year board terms for risk executives Donald Truslow of M&T Bank in Buffalo, N.Y.; Mark Midkiff of Union Bank in San Francisco; Stephen Phillips of First United Bank in Durant, Okla.; and Terrie McQuillen of Community National Bank in Newport, Vt. The RMA has 2,500 institutional members and 16,000 risk professionals in its chapters.

 

Other Comings and Goings

* Sandler O'Neill co-founder Thomas O'Neill has helped start a new firm, Kimberlite Advisors, targeting community and regional banks. He'll compete with his old firm advising on mergers, but not on underwriting; inquiries on the latter will be referred to Sandler O'Neill, which he left in 2010.

* Just after we named her the most powerful woman in banking, KeyCorp Chairman and CEO Beth Mooney was appointed to the board of AT&T, where she'll serve on the corporate development and finance committee.

* After 20 years in Congress, Rep. Spencer Bachus, former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has announced he will not seek reelection in 2014. The Alabama Republican had stepped down as committee head at the end of 2012, following a House GOP rule that limits a lawmaker to six years as chairman or ranking member on a committee.

 

Seeing Double

Brent Smith, the new head of Susquehanna Bank's brokerage program, is moving fast to meet his mandate of doubling revenue within the next five years. One strategy: cloning. Well, sort of. In addition to hiring experienced advisors, Smith plans to bring in associate brokers and groom them into full-fledged advisors. He has already made one such hire and intends to make three to five more over the next year. "We have a lot of good advisors who are growing great books of business but you can't duplicate some of them," he tells our friends at Bank Investment Consultant. "At times, we need to organically grow that ourselves and that's a key focus of mine going forward, so we create sustainability for the program." Smith's program has about $1 billion in assets under management now, and it currently generates annual revenue of about $10 million for Susquehanna Bank, which has 250 bank branches in the mid-Atlantic.

 

Giving up a Plush Gig

Jerry Plush caught analysts by surprise with his resignation as president and chief operating officer of Webster Financial in Waterbury, Conn. The 54-year-old Plush, who was seen as a strong candidate to succeed CEO Jim Smith, cited other career interests as the reason for his Sept. 30 departure. Though he is covered by a one-year noncompete, analysts at Evercore speculated that he could turn up at a competitor to the $20.3 billion-asset Webster, given his solid reputation and ongoing executive searches by other regionals.

 

Getting Groomed

Working with the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York has long been a part of José Ramón González's routine. Now it's his day job. The former Santander BanCorp and Credit Suisse executive stepped down as senior executive for banking and corporate development at OFG Bancorp (formerly Oriental Financial Group) in Puerto Rico to join the Home Loan bank as an executive vice president-with the institution's top role in his sights. "Today we shift from planning succession to planning the transition," current CEO Alfred DelliBovi said when announcing the hire. Without detailing his own timetable, he called González "uniquely qualified to become CEO when I retire." González has been on the board of the Home Loan bank since 2004, and was its vice chairman from 2008 through the end of September.

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