Not all of the dust has settled from the epic reshuffling of the local banking market that started in late 2008.
National players such as Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. still are adjusting to their enlarged operations in Orange County.
Meanwhile, smaller homegrown and regional banks and thrifts hope to keep growing deposits as alternatives to the big banks.
“We’re gaining new customers at the expense of some of the larger banks,” said Tom Meyer, chief executive at Fullerton Community Bank, the county’s second lar-gest savings and loan.
Expanded national banks contend they’re now better poised to compete here by offering a range of services, including consumer and business banking, home lending and wealth management.
Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, the largest bank operating in the county, saw its investment banking operations beefed up here with the purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co., a deal that closed early last year.
BofA and Merrill Lynch had large investment banking teams in the county, according to Greg Mech, Bank of America’s market president in Orange County.
“We’ve seen increasing activity as the merger and improving economy have offered some additional opportunities to broaden our customer base,” he said.
BofA hopes to completely integrate Merrill Lynch by September, Mech said.
Mech said he also expects Countrywide Financial, the Calabasas-based mortgage lender acquired by BofA two years ago, to drive mortgage lending as the housing market rebounds.
The conversion of Countrywide borrowers into BofA banking customers has spurred a big increase in the bank’s deposits here.
“The trend in business is for universal, one-stop shopping,” Mech said. “We feel like we’ve got a head start in Orange County now.”
Wells Fargo
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, the second largest bank operating here, still is in the process of integrating its late 2008 acquisition of North Carolina’s Wachovia Corp.
Compared to others that picked up pieces of the financial meltdown, Wells Fargo has been slower to convert Wachovia locally.
By spring, Wells Fargo expects to have 106 branches in the county, a net gain of 13 from before the deal and down from about 130 now.
Some 25 former Wachovia offices are set to be closed, largely due to overlap, said Hector Retta, Wells Fargo’s regional president for OC.
Wachovia signs are not set to come down from until right before the integration is complete, he said.
“You’ll begin to see evidence of that physical conversion in early April,” Retta said. “Our schedule is very aggressive to complete those conversions to Wells Fargo by the end of April.”
Wachovia didn’t have much in the way of financial advisory services in the county.
“They were just beginning to create a presence in Orange County in the past two years,” Retta said. “We have some ambitious plans to double our level of commercial banking activity in California over the next five years.”
Chase
New York’s JPMorgan Chase is in the process of building its commercial banking operations in the county to take on BofA and Wells.
After taking over Seattle-based Wash-ington Mutual Inc. in late 2008, Chase finished combining administrative functions and branding last fall.
Chase is using WaMu as the basis for a commercial banking push here. Absorbing the failed thrift gave Chase branches and the county’s third-largest share of deposits at about $6 billion, according to our list of the largest commercial banks here (see centerfold insert).
But Chase is building business banking from scratch here as WaMu had focused on gathering consumer deposits and making home loans.
Chase “had some wealth management and mid-corporate commercial banking operations in Orange County before the deal,” said Paul Kaufman, the bank’s regional middle market manager in Irvine. “But WaMu was predominately a consumer bank. So we’re looking at business banking as a major growth area for us in Orange County.”
In most markets, Chase is the top Small Business Administration lender or within striking range, according to Kaufman.
“We expect to replicate that in Orange County,” said Kaufman, who moved here from Chicago late last year to head up Chase’s local commercial banking team.
U.S. Bank
Another national player, Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp’s U.S. Bank, continued its expansion here with the buy late last year of Idaho’s First Bank, which had three banks in California. First Bank had about $1.6 billion in OC deposits.
The deal came after a trio of 2008 moves by U.S. Bank: the takeover of the failed savings and loan of Newport Beach-based Downey Financial Corp.; the takeover of Rancho Cucamonga-based PFF Bancorp Inc.’s PFF Bank & Trust; and the acquisition of Los Angeles-based Mellon First Business Bank with about $1.8 billion in deposits across Southern California.
“If you were to overlap the map of the institutions we’ve bought, it has been a great fit in terms of expanding our footprint across the county,” said Bill Cave, regional president for U.S. Bank in OC.
The Downey and First Bank takeovers didn’t add a lot of commercial customers, said Sean Foley, U.S. Bank’s regional president for Southern California.
Like Chase, U.S. Bank is looking to use its moves to build a base of small-business clients.
“We’re positioned to take advantage of our experience working with businesses to make our presence felt much more in Orange County and throughout southern California,” Foley said.
One homegrown player also has expanded by taking over other banks.
Tustin-based Sunwest Bank acquired three failed banks last year, making it the second-largest bank based in the county by deposits after Costa Mesa’s Pacific Mer-cantile Bank.
Sunwest’s acquisitions: San Clemente-based Pacific Coast National Bank; Irvine’s MetroPacific Bank; and First State Bank of Flagstaff.
“Business customers are placing much more emphasis on a bank’s stability and customer service. It’s not just about who can offer a cheaper rate anymore,” Sunwest Chief Executive Glenn Gray said.
