the PRIVATE BANK of CALIFORNIA

A Message from Our CEO

Be Careful What You Wish For?

08.27.12

As you know, The Private Bank of California has grown like a weed over the past seven years (more like a good weed).  The old 600/300/70/2/1 trick (see our annual report for more details about assets/loans/employees/profits/etc.).  Our wish has always been to keep growing and to serve more customers.  Well, as you now know, our wish came true.

The Private Bank of California will now grow bigger and faster than we ever could have imagined three years ago.  With the announcement of the merger with First PacTrust, on August 22nd, the combined entity will have assets of over $2.0 billion and have over 20 offices (not bad for a nice Jewish bank from the Westside.)

Seriously — we are VERY excited about this development. If you’ve followed my missives about the banking industry, you know that it’s been tough to make a buck given the low growth, low rate, high regulation environment and this is not likely to change for the next 3, 5, 7, who knows, years. Despite these harsh conditions, TPBOC did very well. That said, we fought for every yard and it became clear that in order to continue to outrun the competition and provide exceptional service to our customers we would have to get bigger in a hurry (the same is true for our peers and don’t let them tell you otherwise).

The beauty of this partnership is that, while our parent will be big, we can remain small. The Private Bank of California will merge with First Pac Trust’s Beach Business Bank subsidiary, a service-oriented, high touch-banking model like TPBOC.  Also, both banks are on the same system so we expect no/limited service changes.  Finally, being affiliated with a bigger bank will provide us access to more resources, more product (first mortgages, SBA loans, etc.), more economies of scale on credit/risk/compliance costs, and more capital to meet the increasingly larger credit needs of our private clients and private businesses.

With this transition, we have gained great new partners such as Greg Mitchell, Steve Sugarman, Jeff Seabold, Tim Chrisman and Robert Franko.  And notably, the combined bank is going to be called The Private Bank of California (we must have done something right).  In addition, a bunch of us, including yours truly, are staying on (see the press release).

I am not going to lie to you and say that I am not a little disappointed that TPBOC didn’t buy three banks and get to $2.0 billion on its own. That said, this gets us to the same place via a little different route and we are thrilled.

We look forward to working with our new partners and bringing our clients the same and better banking service in the years to come.