Retired BSB chairman reflects on bank's growth
Courtesy/ Bangor Savings Bank
David Carlisle, recently retired chairman of Bangor Savings Bank's board of directors
For bankers and businessmen, numbers talk. So here is what the numbers are saying about David Carlisle, a respected Bangor businessman who earlier this summer retired after more than a decade on the Board of Directors of Bangor Savings Bank, most of that time as chairman.
When he first joined the board in 1996, Bangor Savings Bank had 13 branches and the bank was still largely focused on the Bangor region. Within three years, the number of branches more than tripled as the institution's leadership eyed growth beyond its home turf. Now the state's largest independent bank, Bangor Savings has 54 branches.
Since 1999, when Carlisle assumed the chairmanship, the bank's net income has gone from $6.04 million to nearly $16.9 million and assets have doubled to $2.3 billion. And the bank's credit quality, measured by non-performing loans, is four times better than that of its national peers, according to bank President and CEO Jim Conlon. Retained earnings are at $251.8 million this year compared to $112.3 million in 1999. Carlisle's successor is James Goff, a media executive who has been on the board since 1989.
Conlon says that the bank has succeeded and weathered the economic turbulence so well largely due to Carlisle's leadership.
And this is just the banking side of the equation.
The Carlisle name may be more equated with timberland. David Carlisle is the board chairman of Prentiss & Carlisle, a forest resource management firm his grandfather started. Based in Bangor, the company owns and manages 1.5 million acres of timberland in Maine, other states and Canada. Carlisle graduated from Bowdoin College in 1962 with a bachelor's degree in economics. He served as a commercial lending officer with State Street Bank in Boston for a decade until 1974, when he joined Prentiss & Carlisle as treasurer.
Mainebiz recently caught up with Carlisle after he returned from a much welcomed vacation on Mount Desert Island.
Mainebiz: What impact do you think you've had as chairman?
Carlisle:I would like to think as board members and as chairman of the board we created an environment that allowed the management to create their own solid management team. Jim Conlon is the CEO, he's just a terrific banker. We created an environment for him to grow and made sure that our job was of the governance and the policy setting and his job was that of running the day-to-day operations of the bank. I guess as I look back on it, I feel pretty good that we did do that.
What do you remember most, what did you help the bank accomplish?
Probably the growth of the bank. At the time I was initially on the board, it was pretty much a regional, Bangor-area bank, not primarily involved in home mortgage loans but heavily involved in home mortgage loans. During that period it was pretty much a statewide expansion, into the southern part of the state and at the same time a transformation of the type of banking into more of a commercial type banking.
What were some of the other aspects of this expansion?
It went into the Waterville-Augusta area and to a lesser extent into the Lewiston-Auburn area. One of the first things that happened was the acquisition (1998) of a number of Fleet Bank branches. For the most part, I'd say that two-thirds of them were in areas that the bank hadn't previously been in. There was some overlap. It was a pretty solid statewide presence. The Portland market was penetrated by the bank on its own without acquisitions from Fleet.
Didn't it acquire other non-Fleet Bank branches in southern Maine?
Bangor Savings Bank acquired a bank down in the Biddeford-Saco area, about three years ago. That was a fairly small bank -- Pepperell Bank. It had five branches in York County which Bangor Savings Bank hadn't been in, so that was a pretty good fit.
It's particularly important to expand in the southern part of the state, which is really where the growth is, the growth in loans and deposits. I don't expect that it will abandon this area because this area has been very good to it; [there's a] very solid deposit base here.
Do you see online banking as perhaps cutting back the need for adding traditional brick and mortar buildings?
I don't see it. You could probably find some people who would make that argument. I think I've heard that kind of thing during the last 10 or 15 years and I haven't seen any evidence. I think that people still basically like the feel of going into a branch bank. But Bangor Savings Bank is right on the verge of bringing out a new version of personal Internet banking. That was sort of started on my watch but not implemented. I'm kind of looking forward to that. I hope to have a tutorial in the next couple of weeks.
During your tenure, the bank reorganized into a mutual holding corporation; what was the reasoning behind that?
The idea was that it would potentially give it an opportunity to do things in the future that otherwise it couldn't do as a free standing bank. The big thing was the raising of capital. If you're a mutual bank without stockholders your only source is really what you can borrow or what you earn and retain in the bank. You have no ability to go out in the marketplace and raise capital. That was the prime reason why this mutual company was formed. Others have been formed in the past to allow the bank to go public to sell stock. That was not the reason this bank did it. But certainly that is a possibility. The structure is in place to do it. It was more the thought of raising capital. And it seems to have paid off.
Did going to a mutual holding corporation status help the bank weather the difficulties brought on by the national financial markets?
I don't know if by itself it did. It was maybe another source of capital that was available but it wasn't something that was used. I think that the real reason the bank was able to weather the storm was its underwriting of loans was fairly conservative and fairly prudent before it hit the fan. The bank management, and I would say the board, too, was not encouraged to chase after the crazy things others were doing, mostly aggressive lending.
How do you think Bangor Savings Bank is proceeding into the future, especially in light of recently enacted financial laws and requirements?
I think I see them continuing what they are doing. They are committed to opening three or four branches in the Portland area. Continuing the same stable, steady, prudent-type banking that they have been doing. They have some momentum going. Just keep doing what they are doing and grow the business they've got, particularly in the greater Bangor area, which is where it all started and which is, if you look at it, really the solid foundation.
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