Sefton, President of San Diego Trust, Exits After 52 Years

Thomas W. Sefton, San Diego Trust & Savings’ longtime president and chief executive, has turned over the bank presidency to Daniel D. Herde, an officer at the bank since 1968, San Diego Trust spokesman Fielder Lutes said Thursday.

Sefton, grandson of Joseph W. Sefton Sr., the bank’s founder and chairman, joined the bank 52 years ago and spent the past 30 years as president and chief executive. His father, Joseph W. Sefton Jr., previously served as president. Sefton’s son, Harley K., now a bank vice president, will be elected to the bank’s board of directors, Lutes said.

Sefton’s retirement comes just months after the bank--San Diego’s largest locally owned bank--celebrated its 100th anniversary.

“I wanted to see the bank through that remarkable achievement,” Sefton said in a release issued Thursday. “After 52 years with the bank, though, I’m eager to spend more time pursuing various personal interests.”

Sefton joined the bank in 1935 and was elected president in 1960. He spent five years with the Army Air Corps during World War II.

The bank’s fourth president in 100 years, Sefton will continue as president emeritus and director emeritus, Lutes said.

Sefton became the second member of longtime San Diego banking families to retire in recent months. In January, Kim Fletcher retired as chief executive of HomeFed Corp., the parent company of HomeFed Bank, although he retains chairmanship. His father, Charles K. Fletcher, founded Home Federal S&L; in 1934.

Sefton’s departure from the day-to-day management of San Diego Trust “was really surprising,” said Peter Q. Davis, president of San Diego-based Bank of Commerce. “It’s very, very rare to see that kind of continuity, just four presidents in 100 years.”

Equally rare, banking industry observers said, was the fact that San Diego Trust remains controlled by the Sefton family, which holds a majority of the stock in the bank’s parent corporation. “You’d think that in 100 years you’d get at least one or two chances to get a substantial multiple on your book price,” Davis quipped.

The Sefton family’s decision to pass up potentially lucrative buy-out offers in the past “speaks well for the family, in that they passed up opportunities in order to continue running a community bank,” Davis said.

Sefton, in his release, commented that “incidentally and for the record, the bank is still not for sale.”

Banking industry observers described the bank under Sefton as a generally conservative institution.

But Sefton’s management team wasn’t afraid to take chances on new technology and services. San Diego Trust in 1976 became the first bank in San Diego to install a network of automatic teller machines (ATMs). It also was the first bank in San Diego to offer credit cards, Lutes said, and was one of the first banks to offer no-fee checking accounts.

“There were a lot of people standing on the sidelines saying that we were going to go broke with the checking accounts,” Lutes recalled.

“They’ve been imaginative,” Davis said. “They’ve been a tough group to compete against, and Dan Herde is just a super banker.”

Herde, a past-president of the California Bankers Assn., was elected chief operating officer in 1980. In addition to being named president, Herde will join the bank’s board of directors.

Herde isn’t the first non-Sefton to hold the president’s title at San Diego Trust, Lutes said. Myron T. Gilmore served as the bank’s president during the late 1800s.