BANKING / FINANCE

Bigger Challenge: Moving quickly in the latest round of musical chairs in Orange County banking, veteran county banker Lance C. Blue has taken the seat of Imperial Bank’s regional vice president in charge of county operations.

He replaces Ronald L. Askew, who quit in January to become chairman, president and chief executive of Pacific Inland Bank in Anaheim after an executive shake-up there.

Blue, 51, takes over a bigger business than the one he had for four years at First Business Bank in Los Angeles, where he was in charge of the Orange County region. Imperial had $2.9 billion in assets at the end of December, contrasted with First Business’ assets of $517 million. But Imperial’s Orange County business is about five times larger, he said.

He called First Business “a very good bank” and said he left on amicable terms.

“The reason for the change is the challenge of running a much, much larger regional bank as well as (receiving) a bigger compensation package,” Blue said. He would not disclose his salary and benefits, except to say that stock options are part of the package.

Stock options could become important if Imperial, one of the state’s few independent banks with more than $1 billion in assets, is bought out by an Eastern bank once nationwide interstate banking is allowed in California next year.

Blue, 51, has been a banker for 28 years, 22 of them in the county. He was an Imperial Bank branch manager in Santa Ana in 1973 to 1977 when he left to help start CommerceBank in Newport Beach. He was founding president of CommerceBank and rose to vice chairman and chief executive before leaving in January, 1986, for First Business Bank.