3 Banks Report Key Changes in Management
Three major West Coast banks, which have been buffeted by financial or personnel turbulence in recent years, announced high-level executive changes Monday in a kind of corporate version of musical chairs.
In separate announcements, First Interstate Bank of California said its chairman, John F. King, is quitting to work for Crocker Bank, while Crocker said the head of its California banking operations, Richard M. Rosenberg, is leaving to become president and chief operating officer at Seafirst Corp. and its principal subsidiary, Seattle First National Bank.
Los Angeles-based First Interstate, meanwhile, said William E. B. Siart will assume King’s old post as chairman, while keeping his present jobs of president and chief executive.
Siart was promoted to the chief executive post earlier this year as part of a management shake-up to improve profitability in the California operations of First Interstate Bancorp, the parent company. The 38-year-old Siart, viewed as one of First Interstate’s fastest-rising stars, had been head of the bank’s highly profitable Nevada operations.
In transferring to Seafirst in Seattle, the 55-year-old Rosenberg is rejoining his old boss, Richard P. Cooley, Seafirst’s chairman and chief executive. Cooley was chairman and chief executive of Wells Fargo & Co. until late 1982, when he resigned to go to Seafirst.
Rosenberg resigned from Wells last year to work for Crocker.
Rosenberg is “one of the best marketing and management people in the banking industry today,” Cooley said in a statement. “He will bring an exciting and aggressive approach to banking service at Seafirst.”
Seafirst is the banking company that BankAmerica Corp. acquired in 1983 following the heavy energy-loan losses that Seafirst sustained in connection with the 1982 failure of Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma City. The Seattle bank is still in the midst of “a long workout situation,” said Daniel Williams, analyst for the San Francisco-based Sutro Group.
Crocker, meanwhile, said King, 52, will take Rosenberg’s old job as head of Crocker’s consumer and commercial operations in California. He will assume the titles that Rosenberg held: vice chairman and director of the corporation and the bank.
King said in a phone interview that, after 10 years at First Interstate, “it was time to look for new opportunities elsewhere.”
San Francisco-based Crocker, which was taken over this year by Britain’s Midland Bank, lost $324 million in 1984 because of severe problems in its agricultural and real estate loan portfolio but has been modestly profitable this year. “The turnaround is there, and I expect it to continue next year,” King said.
