The United States of Iberiabank

Daryl Byrd doesn't care where your office is — just do a good job for the bank.

Byrd, the chief executive of Iberiabank (IBKC) in Lafayette, La., emphasized at American Banker's M&A Symposium this week that one of the bank's strengths is that its management team is spread across numerous states.

"We believe our knowledge of many Southern markets is strategically important to our growth," he said.

Iberiabank has $12 billion of assets and 270 offices in 12 states. In the last 10 years, Iberiabank has grown by $10 billion assets, most of that through acquisitions of five failed banks, seven open banks and four nonbanks.

Of the executives on the senior planning group, two live in Lafayette, four in New Orleans and two split time between those cities. The others live in places where Iberiabank does not even have a banking presence (yet): two in North Carolina, one in Atlanta and one in Annapolis.

"I've lived in nine markets in six different states in this business," he says. Technology and travel demands make it meaningless whether everyone is in the same city, Byrd said. Letting managers live where they want — he noted a key executive located in North Carolina who would never have uprooted to Lafayette — makes it easier to recruit top talent, he said.

"We will be attracted to markets that we know, we know where we can find the best people, [and] given our experience we know a lot of markets," he says.

However, the process of gaining all that experience can test one's personal life. "I think I have personally lived in 24 or 25 residences and 15 different houses in well over 30 years of marriage," he said. "I wouldn't try that if I were you."