With a goal of goosing loan growth, banks in California, Texas, and the Pacific Northwest are hiring commercial lenders who recently lost their jobs at Washington Mutual Inc.
Dozens of loan officers dismissed by Wamu in July when it decided to close 53 offices in 14 states are finding jobs, and their new employers expect them to lure clients away from the Seattle thrift.
That was certainly the reasoning Robert D. Sznewajs used when he hired six former Wamu lenders this month at West Coast Bancorp. in Lake Oswego, Ore.
“These are an experienced group of professionals who have a lot of knowledge in the local market,” said Mr. Sznewajs, the $1.7 billion-asset company’s president and chief executive. “Since Washington Mutual has sent letters to their customers” in those offices “that they no longer would like to do business with them, this is an opportunity for us to attract those customers.”
Three other companies in the Pacific Northwest have recently added former Wamu lenders: the $3.1 billion-asset Umpqua Holdings Inc. in Portland, Ore., the $2.3 billion-asset Washington Trust Bank in Spokane, and the $1.7 billion-asset Columbia Banking System Inc. in Tacoma.
Further south in Texas, the $2.3 billion-asset PlainsCapital Bank in Fort Worth announced Monday that it had hired the entire eight-person team of commercial bankers who staffed Washington Mutual’s Fort Worth loan production office.
Not only will the hirings help the privately held PlainsCapital win commercial business away from Wamu, they could also help it capitalize on opportunities in a region that is experiencing strong loan growth, said Alan B. White, the chairman and CEO of Plains-Capital Corp., the bank’s parent.
“We may be able to attract some other bankers from other banks, because these Wamu bankers have a reputation for being very knowledgeable,” Mr. White said. “Now that they’re at an institution that has a culture of responding to customers very quickly, other bankers may be much more willing to join them.”
Mr. White expects the Wamu bankers, along with additional new hires, to bring in around $200 million of new loans over the next several years.
In Texas, community banks are already adding commercial loans as fast as their loan officers can book them, but in California and the Pacific Northwest growth has been more sluggish, so any business taken away from Wamu would provide a real boost for the companies that hired its former lenders.
“These hirings will certainly superchage whatever demand there was in the works for these community banks,” said James Bradshaw, an analyst who covers banks in the Pacific Northwest for D.A. Davidson & Co. in Portland.
Mr. Bradshaw said he expects most of the $600 million of commercial loans Wamu has in Oregon and Washington to follow the laid-off lending officers to the community banks that hired them.
Manual Ramirez, an analyst in San Francisco with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc., said the same scenario is true for California banks — like the $13.5 billion-asset City National in Los Angeles and the $175 million-asset 1st Pacific Bank in San Diego — that have picked up manpower from Wamu.
Commercial loan demand — even in southern California — has yet to rebound strongly, so hiring Wamu lenders is viewed as a good way to boost assets, Mr. Ramirez said. “It’s certainly cheaper than acquisitions.”
It’s not just community banks snapping up former Wamu lenders. Zions Bancorp. of Salt Lake City, which has assets of nearly $31 billion, has hired 39 of them.
