What keeps you up at night?

SWCB is shareholder and community driven. I constantly look for ways to enhance shareholder value while providing a community service by helping small businesses establish and grow their business. Attracting and retaining the right professionals is a constant goal. We are active in each of the micro-markets we serve by participating in chamber of commerce activities and other civic enterprises. Our directors and staff are involved with various community outreach projects including hospital districts and numerous non-profit enterprises.

Five years from now, we’ll be surprised that community banks ...

... are still around. Many years ago the “experts” predicted that community banks would become extinct falling to the pressures of state and nationwide banks and non-banks offering financial services. While it is true that the number of commercial banks has declined from 12,343 in 1990 to 7,812 as of 2002, the recent wave of de novo banks over the last five years is evidence that the community bank is not dead. Many clients continue to find community banks to be more responsive to their financial service needs and easier to deal with in general. While the trend in the decline in the number of banks may indeed continue in the coming years, there will always be room in the market for well-managed and capitalized community banks.

Do you have a mentor?

I worked with Sid Fox for 18 years at the original Southwest Bank. I did the data processing in-house and Sid promised if I performed well he would teach me banking, and through the years I became the president and CEO of the holding company, which was sold to Security Pacific in 1989 for three times book. Sid was my mentor all that time. When he was killed in an auto accident in 1992, I lost a mentor and a very dear friend.

Do you have any hobbies?

I’m an ordained deacon in the Roman Catholic Church and spend a lot of time in ministerial work on weekends and evenings, and between that and my family, those are my hobbies.