Nearly 18 months after its president resigned because of illness, Chicago's ShoreBank is still searching for her successor.
Margaret A. Cheap stepped down as head of the $1.1 billion-asset community development bank in August of 2000 to focus on her battle with brain cancer. She died last February. ShoreBank has also lost two of its founders in recent years - Milton Davis retired in April 2000 and James Fletcher died in September 1998.
The bank, which caters mainly to South Side black neighborhoods, has hired Korn/Ferry International to find a new president and hired Bob Nash, a former Clinton Administration official, as vice chairman.
Mary Houghton, the president of the holding company, Shorebank Corp., said six candidates have been interviewed for the president's post but no offers have been made. "It's a great job," she said. "If ever there was an organization that was raring to go and has the capacity to do what makes sense, it's the bank right now."
ShoreBank's unaudited income was $10.1 million last year for a 14% return on equity, which Ms. Houghton attributed to the line managers and excellent growth in real estate lending on Chicago's South Side.
Chief operating officer Anne L. Arvia, who has been interim president since Ms. Cheap's resignation, said she is not interested in keeping the job. She said the bank is offering market rates and that pay has not been an issue; the post has been vacant so long because ShoreBank has been unable to find someone with the right mix of qualifications in community development and banking, she said.
"We really want a combination of leadership in financial services and in the development world," Ms. Arvia said.
Community development banks' primary goal is to lend money to help economically distressed communities revitalize their businesses and housing markets, but they also have to make money. People familiar with these institutions say their leaders must have qualities that can be harder to measure than business acumen.
David H. Voss, the president of the First Bank of the Americas, a community-development bank that caters to Hispanics on Chicago's South Side, said anyone who wants to do this type of work cannot expect to have bankers' hours.
"It's a little different than mainstream banking, because CDs and home equity lines of credit and traditional products aren't as important," Mr. Voss said. For his bank, wire transfer services to Mexico and helping customers get taxpayer identification numbers from the Internal Revenue Service are two examples of important services.
Michael A. Frias, a community affairs officer in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s Chicago office, agreed that heading community development banks takes special skills. "They need someone who is aggressive and can get out and work with people on the street level and participate with different groups," he said. Still, he noted that regulators hold community development banks to the same safety-and-soundness standards applied to regular banks.
ShoreBank would like to hire someone who reflects it clientele.
"We serve a large population of African-Americans, so that would be a positive to have an African-American candidate," Ms. Arvia said.
This would be a bonus, though not everyone thinks it is necessary. Mr. Frias pointed to First Bank of the Americas; Mr. Voss and his wife, Pamela, the bank's co-president, are white.
Ms. Arvia said the company is looking for a leader with ideas on how to serve urban and unbanked markets.
"We don't need somebody to come in and tell us how to judge credit quality," she said. "It's the creativity and entrepreneurialism that are really necessary."
