Mike Perdue

By all accounts, 2003 was a good year for Mike Perdue. In July, he became president of Escondido-based Community National Bank and before year’s end, he assumed the CEO title.

“We’re still kind of a Trojan horse,” Perdue cheerfully admits. That’s because without attracting much attention, Community National has grown its asset base to the half-billion-dollar mark, straddling San Diego’s North County and Riverside County along Interstate 15.

Back in the 1980s, Community National was known as Fallbrook National Bank. It grew through 1996 to about $100 million, Perdue says. In 1999, the bank changed its name and formed a holding company.

Perdue’s path to Community National’s executive suite wound through a series of regional banks. In 1987, he joined Torrey Pines Bank in San Diego as senior vice president and regional manager. After Wells Fargo Bank acquired Torrey Pines Bank in 1989, Perdue joined Ranpac Inc. of Temecula, a real estate development and civil engineering firm, as vice president and chief financial officer. In 1992, he was named president and CEO of Temecula Valley National Bank.

TVNB merged with Escondido National Bank and was subsequently renamed First Pacific National Bank; Perdue was named executive vice president and chief operating officer in 1993 and then elected to the board of FP Bancorp Inc. and First Pacific National Bank in 1996. After a year with Zions Bancorp (which acquired First Pacific) as executive vice president and regional manager, Perdue joined Entrepreneurial Corporate Group in Newport Beach as executive vice president.

If you followed all that, Perdue was then recruited to take Community National to the next level, where assets are measured in 10 figures. His bank has taken a leadership role in North County.

“There’s First Community Bancorp, (with $2.1 billion in assets) but we don’t really run into them because we’re more I-15 north and south,” he says. “Although we do some lending in San Diego, we don’t really run into San Diego National. With the consolidation over the last decade, all the good medium-sized banks in the half-billion range are gone.”

Perdue doesn’t see Community National in competition with de novo smaller banks or megabanks like Wells and BofA. “We have the opportunity to take market share from the big banks very easily,” he says. “When you get to this size you have advantages.”

With a lending limit of about $8 million, Perdue can bank customers that will outgrow the de novos. If a loan exceeds a smaller bank’s lending limit, “you can participate it out,” he says. “But I’ve been there and done that. Let’s say a bank comes to you and says we got a $5 million loan. We’ve got $1 million; will you take four? The bottom line is we’re not going to take the $4 million unless we’re the lead bank.”

Like other San Diego bank CEOs, Perdue says it’s getting more difficult to find good lenders. “They used to train up at the big bank and then come to work for a community bank,” he explains. “Now the big banks hire business development guys and then turn customers over to an underwriting department. We’re looking for people that can do both and those people are hard to find.”

With the economy gearing up, Perdue has a list of acquisition targets, but says Community National’s “organic growth” is very exciting. “We think we can get to $1 billion, maybe a billion and a half over the next five to seven years, just going up and down the I-15 corridor.”

Community National’s accounts were fattened by a $10.9 million private placement this summer that sold out in three days.

“The market in California is 75 percent controlled by BofA, Wells, and US Bank, which means there’s a huge pot there,” he says. “We don’t need to compete with community banks. We just need to take a little market share from those big guys to be tremendously successful. That’s the message we’re sending to our staff.”