Costa Mesa-based Pacific Mercantile Bank will seek a chief executive to replace Ray Dellerba after a scheduled stock sale wraps up—and a new shareholder will have a say in the hire.
Dellerba is expected to become vice chairman and retain the chief executive’s post for holding company Pacific Mercantile Bancorp. He plans to focus on strategic initiatives after he steps away from his day-to-day duties at the bank, according to the company.
Dellerba did not return calls seeking comment on the pending transition.
A recent statement from the bank said that “the individual selected to become the new bank CEO must also be reasonably acceptable to the Carpenter Funds.”
Carpenter funds is a unit of Carpenter & Co., an Irvine-based private equity firm that bought a stake in Pacific Mercantile as part of a recently completed sale of the $11.2 million worth of newly created preferred stock.
Carpenter & Co. could not be reached for comment on the upcoming executive change at Pacific Mercantile.
The recent sale of shares raised enough capital for the bank to satisfy a requirement from the California Department of Financial Institutions.
· Headquarters: Costa Mesa
· Business: banking
· Founded: 1998
· Ticker symbol: PMBC (Nasdaq)
· Market value: about $38 million
· Notable: plans to hire new chief executive for Pacific Mercantile Bank upon completion of second sale of preferred shares
The order to increase capital came in August 2010. Regulators required Pacific Mercantile to boost shareholder’s equity to 9% of assets by Jan. 31, 2011.
Regulators had allowed Pacific Mercan-tile extra time to meet the mark. The recent stock sale took the ratio from about 6.5% to more than 9%.
Pacific Mercantile is seeking to bolster its capital cushion with the sale of an additional $27.3 million worth of shares.
The bank expects to sell $11.8 million worth of the preferred shares to the same three investors in the recent private placement: Carpenter Community BancFund LP, Carpenter Community BancFund-A LP, and New York-based SBAV LP, an affiliate of the investment adviser Clinton Group Inc.
Pacific Mercantile also plans to sell $15.5 million in common stock to the Carpenter funds.
The bank will grant the three investors warrants to purchase more shares of common stock.
Carpenter & Co. will have the right to name three members to the bank’s nine-seat board once the sale of the additional shares closes. The Clinton Group got the right to name one board member with its earlier stock purchase.
Pacific Mercantile was the biggest commercial bank based in Orange County, with assets of about $1 billion, until recently.
Opus Bank took the top spot when it completed an official move of its headquarters to Irvine.
Opus has about $2.2 billion in assets and expects the total to reach $3 billion with the completion of an acquisition of Fullerton-based RMG Capital Corp. and its savings and loans subsidiary Fullerton Community Bank later this month.
Opus had its executive office in Irvine while its on-the-books headquarters remained in Redondo Beach for the past year.
