The Sacramento area's torrid growth has helped Placer Sierra Bank more than double its assets in five years, to $1.5 billion. Now it aims to replicate that success in the nation's fastest-growing region, southern California's Inland Empire.
Placer Sierra announced the hiring this week of Marshall V. Laitsch, a longtime banker in the Riverside area, as the president of its new southern California division, which is branded Bank of Orange County.
The division has nine branches in Orange and Los Angeles counties, but bank executives want the division to expand eastward and follow the people and companies fleeing expensive coastal cities, said Ronald W. Bachli, the chairman and chief executive of the bank's parent, Placer Sierra Bancshares.
"There's a lot of growth along Interstate 15, and Mr. Laitsch has knowledge of the Inland Empire," Mr. Bachli said in an interview Monday. "He'll also be attracting additional experienced bankers to help us develop loan production in that area."
At first Mr. Laitsch and his team will primarily seek loans there, either through a loan production office or by opening a branch. Within a year, though, the bank intends to have full-service Inland Empire branches so that it can also go after deposits; it will start branches or buy another community bank, Mr. Bachli said.
He said Placer Sierra Bancshares also plans to buy more banks in either Orange County or Los Angeles County. In several years it would like to reach $5 billion of assets, evenly distributed in northern and southern California.
Mr. Laitsch was lured away from the $296 million-asset Sunwest Bank in Tustin, Calif., whose loans grew more than 30% last year when it entered the Inland Empire under Mr. Laitsch's lead as president and CEO. Earlier in his career he oversaw the Orange County and Inland Empire commercial banking operations for more than a decade at the $46.5 billion-asset Union Bank of California, which is mostly owned by Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group Inc.
James Abbott, an analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. Inc. in Arlington, Va., said Placer should do well in southern California.
"Placer Sierra will be able to take significant market share there, because they have a business model that rewards salespeople for being very aggressive, instead of just sitting and waiting for the phone to ring," Mr. Abbott said. "Plus, that region has some of the best demographics in the country."
In May, Placer Sierra Bancshares bought Bank of Orange County, along with its parent, Southland Capital Co., for $110 million in stock. Southland's majority owner was California Community Financial Institutions Fund Limited Partnership - which also owns most of Placer Sierra's common stock. The general partner of the limited partnership is Belvedere Capital Partners LLC, a private equity firm in San Francisco.
Mr. Abbott said one good result of the merger was that it put Bank of Orange County's employees under the direction of Placer Sierra's chief operating officer, Randall Reynoso, who was a top producer at the $4.6 billion-asset Westamerica Bank in San Rafael, Calif., before joining Placer Sierra in 2000.
Another goal is to expand more in northern California, Mr. Bachli said. The company recently bought First Financial Bancorp in Lodi, Calif., the parent of the $324 million-asset Bank of Lodi, for $50 million.
Placer Sierra did an initial public offering at $20 a share in August. It was trading at $27.80 late Wednesday.
