Since it’s been acquiring other banks from the time it was born in 1998, California Bank & Trust says it has the process down pat.
Earlier this month, the San Diego-based lender completed the conversion of Irvine-based Eldorado Bank, integrating 14 branch offices and about 300 employees into its system.
CB & T;, with about $8 billion in total assets, is a subsidiary of Salt Lake City-based Zions Bancorporation and is the sixth-largest bank in California.
CB & T; used a “buddy system” it developed in the past few years while it was acquiring other banks, including Eldorado. The program matches up managers and other employees from Eldorado branches with their counterparts in CB & T.;
Along with the addition of branches that now total 97, CB & T; has also changed leaders.
Former Chief Executive Robert Sarver resigned in May and was replaced by David Blackford, who headed up the bank’s real estate finance unit and its Orange County branches.
Sarver, who joined the bank in 1998 and was instrumental in the Zions acquisition of San Diego’s Grossmont Bank, and later Sumitomo Bank, has returned to real estate development, a CB & T; spokesman said.
Blackford has 27 years in banking, including stints at Bank One in Arizona where he headed up that institution’s Southwest division real estate lending. He also managed the largest real estate portfolio in all of Bank One.
His career includes stints as president of Far West Financial in Orange County and as senior vice president of First National Bank of Denver.
The Irvine resident will be splitting his time between CB & T;’s Orange County office and its San Diego headquarters. To a question whether the bank may move its headquarters out of San Diego, Blackford said, “Absolutely not.” n
Allen is a staff writer with the San Diego Business Journal.
