Orange County has about 3,000 middle-market companies, more than the 700 companies in Portland and 2,000 in Seattle area.
That data point is a key reason why Umpqua Bank, one of the largest banks in the Northwest, is planning to almost double its OC employee count to 70 within the next 15 months.
“There are many opportunities for the bank here,” said Richard Cabrera, who’s based in the bank’s Newport Beach office and is its top representative in Southern California.
“There’s a different type of mix in the Northwest where there is a more traditional base with a slower growth rate,” he said. “Here the companies are younger and more risk tolerant and their growth rate is higher.”
The Portland-based bank, which has $26.5 billion in assets, is the latest bank to announce a hiring spree in Orange County.
Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank, which has traditionally focused on the Midwest and whose roots trace to 1858, opened an office in Irvine this year, hiring well-known OC banker Joe Yurosek as its California market president.
City National Bank Chief Executive Russell Goldsmith told the Business Journal in May that the bank is “looking in big, bold letters” for financial executives in the county. Irvine-based Opus Bank said it hired 21 commercial and business bankers in the first half of the year to expand its lending capabilities—both in Orange County and other markets where it operates.
Irvine-based Pacific Premier Bancorp (Nasdaq: PPBI) bought neighbor Plaza Bancorp in November and completed the acquisition of Los Angeles-based Grandpoint Capital Inc. in July.
Longtime local banker Bala Balkrishna opened Infinity Bank in February in Santa Ana, and banking consultant Ed Carpenter said he’s advising another bank scheduled to open.
Hiring Spree
Cabrera himself is relatively new to Umpqua, having joined the bank in 2016. He’s a longtime veteran of OC banking and worked for more than 30 years at places like Bank of America Corp. and California Bank & Trust.
Cabrera also leads Umpqua’s corporate bank, debt capital markets, M&A advisory and international banking divisions throughout California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
Cabrera said Umpqua is seeking to hire regional directors, portfolio managers, relationship managers and operations support, among other positions.
“It’s very competitive to get talent,” Cabrera said. “There’s a value proposition that we have to provide them.”
One of its advantages is providing a suite of international services that smaller banks cannot offer and yet be more nimble than larger competitors like Wells Fargo & Co. or Bank of America, he said.
Umpqua, whose name derives from a valley where indigenous people used to reside, was formed in 1953 in an Oregonian timber town. Now a publicly-traded company, Umpqua Holdings Corp.’s (Nasdaq: UMPQ) shares have climbed about 24% in the past year and it has a $4.8 billion market cap.
Its $26.5 billion in assets are more than twice that of the biggest OC bank based here, Pacific Premier.
Yet in Orange County, Umpqua ranked No. 38 on the Business Journal’s annual ranking of banks by deposits, reporting $838 million as of June 2017, a 38% rise from the prior year.
“We’re not in Southern California in any meaningful way,” Cabrera said. “We intend to grow this bank.”
Companywide, the bank plans to double its commercial and industrial business to middle-market companies.
That effort “will come to fruition in Southern California and the heart will be in Orange County,” he said.
“It represents an opportunity for our Portland-based bank to be part of the Southern California economy.”
