Irvine’s Plaza Bank plans to start selling stock this week.
The startup bank is set to be the latest in a flurry of banks debuting in Orange County.
Others include ethnic-focused operations such as First Vietnamese American Bank and Uniti Bank, which is geared to Korean-Americans, plus a handful of small community business banks.
Some of the business banks are expected to be rivals to Plaza Bank.
They include 6-month-old MetroPacific Bank and 4-year-old CommerceWest Bank, both of Irvine, and Newport Beach-based Orange County Business Bank, launched in late 2002.
Plaza Bank Chief Executive Donald L. Solsby said the bank has approval to sell 1.2 million to 1.3 million shares of stock in an initial public offering.
A gathering of potential investors is set for Tuesday evening at the Hyatt Regency in Irvine.
The bank is allowed to boost its stock sale by as much as 10%, which would give it a market value of about $12 million to $14 million, based on its $10 a share offering price.
Solsby said the bank plans to trade on the over-the-counter bulletin board.
The offering prospectus was printed last week. It is set to be distributed to potential investors this week.
Solsby, 62, is a retired banker who previously ran several OC banks, including Bank of Westminster, Pacific National Bank and American Interstate Bank, both of Newport Beach. All three eventually were bought by larger banks.
Plaza Bank is Solsby’s first foray as a bank founder.
“We want to structure deals for our customers as opposed to finding a reason to turn down lending opportunities,” he said.
Solsby described OC as one of California’s most “vibrant micro-economies.”
Plaza Bank plans to lend to businesses with annual sales of $3 million to $25 million. It also will offer loans backed by the Small Business Administration.
“Small and medium-sized business are a source of new jobs here in Orange County,” he said.
Solsby most recently ran the loan production office for Los Angeles-based American Business Bank in Irvine.
He is the former South Bay regional vice president at Mellon 1st Business Bank in Torrance where he oversaw strategic growth in the area.
Solsby has tapped nine directors for Plaza Bank’s board. One is Lawrence L. Luckey, a 59-year-old banker who worked for more than 15 years with Solsby at different banks. Luckey also is Plaza Bank’s chief operating officer.
Plaza plans to open its headquarters by the end of the year at Newport Gateway Towers, 19900 MacArthur Blvd. The state approved the bank’s charter in late May.
The opening would bring the number of banks with OC headquarters to roughly 18. Despite the recent bank additions, the number of OC-based banks falls well short of the peak nearly two decades ago when there was about 45 independent banks here.
The bank’s chairman is Irvine lawyer Robert J. Feldhake, managing partner with Feldhake Roquemore LLP.
Feldhake, 50, is a longtime litigator in OC. He was general counsel and director with Pacific National in the early 1990s, where he worked with Solsby and Luckey.
Also making up the Plaza board are Leslee A. Temple, a landscape architect with Nuvis Landscape Architecture and Planning in Costa Mesa; commercial real estate broker Thomas J. Taylor, senior vice president of Grubb & Ellis/BRE Commercial in Newport Beach; Bruce E. Sandler of Irvine-based accounting firm McElrath, Geyer, Sandler & Fisher Inc.; Barry D. Foust of Foust Construction Co. in Santa Ana; Horacio Bellofiore, owner of a Los Angeles-based specialty produce business; and Lynne M. Pierson Doti, economics professor at Orange-based Chapman University’s George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics.
Other senior executives include Chief Financial Officer Bruce McDonald, Chief Credit Officer Doug Sherman and Director of Operations Lissette Duran.
