The decision to make its first out-of-state acquisition by entering southwest Missouri made for a logical geographic progression at Little Rock’s Bear State Financial Inc.
The $70 million cash-stock swap purchase of $454.9 million-asset Metropolitan National Bank of Springfield, Missouri, didn’t just give access to the Springfield market. For Bear State, the combination was as much about deepening its pool of talent as it was about expanding its footprint and growing its $1.4 billion asset base.
That was underscored once the deal closed Oct. 1, and the titles of president and CEO of Bear State Financial and Bear State Bank were bestowed on Mark McFatridge, president and CEO of Metropolitan.
“Once you get behind my resume, you see my big bank experience,” the 48-year-old executive said. “It’s something I’ve been working for my entire career.
“I’ve been exposed to a lot of really good leaders, and I learned a ton from those great leaders.” (See his bio at the end of this article.)
Bear State hadn’t just found a merger partner. It found a new leader for its management team.
Rick Massey, who retained his role as the founding chairman of Bear State Financial, said the timing of the courtship made for a providential merger. McFatridge was three years into lining out Metropolitan’s post-2008 operational shortcomings and reinvigorating its staff.
“He was building something for the long term, and we hit it nicely,” Massey said. “McFatridge was brought in to fix Metropolitan. He built a lending team that was fully capable of doing larger loans in the market.
“The problem you have with doing these community bank deals is the loan team doesn’t usually have the sophistication, experience or Rolodex [of contacts] to do big deals.
“Their loan size was about $9 million; ours was about $28 million. The hard part is do you have a lending team to now do $35 million loans?
“Usually, you don’t see that scalability in your loan team,” Massey said. “We think those guys are going to immediately walk in and do big loans, and in their case, even bigger loans than they could do before the merger. That’s uncommon in these community bank deals.”
‘A Good Banker’
Little Rock bank consultant Randy Dennis applauded the decision to put McFatridge at the operational helm of Bear State.
“Mark is a great addition to their team,” said Dennis, president of DD&F Consulting Group. “He is a good banker. I’ve known him for a number of years. I’ve known him since he worked for Union Planters up in Indianapolis.”
McFatridge grew up in Indiana and went to college and spent the first 16 years of his professional life working in the Indianapolis area.
He joined Union Planters Corp. of Memphis in March 2002, less than two years ahead of its massive merger with Regions Financial Corp. of Birmingham, Alabama.
On the backside of that $5.9 billion deal in January 2004, McFatridge served on the 17-member integration team composed of Union Planters and Regions executives.
Beyond the experience of helping meld two large banking organizations, McFatridge also met fellow team member Tom Fritsche of Regions. The two became friends and stayed in touch after their career paths parted.
It was Fritsche, now senior EVP and COO at Bear State, who made the initial contact in July 2014 with McFatridge that got the ball rolling and culminated in the purchase of Springfield’s Metropolitan National Bank.
“That started the courtship,” McFatridge said. “We were positioning to be an acquirer.”
He had joined Metropolitan in February 2012 and received accolades on the local and national level for his leadership. Metropolitan was named among the “Best Banks to Work For” in 2013 and 2015 by American Banker.
“We took a lot of pride in that,” McFatridge said.
While restoring the financial fortunes of Metropolitan, he rebuilt the corporate culture through employee-driven initiatives such as the Pride, Pas-sion and Culture program.
A group of 20 staffers representing operations across the bank were charged with enhancing the customer-employee dynamics at Metro-politan by examining two questions: How do we deliver an excellent customer experience, and how do we deliver an excellent employee experience?
“We had a lot of great people who had a lot of passion, but they were just beaten down,” said McFatridge, who came to Springfield in 2006 via Regions.
The community banks in Missouri were struggling as poor performers among the 32 groups at Regions. Steve Schenck, head of the Midwest Banking Group for Regions, mentioned the possibility of forming a new group to focus attention on the banks and revamp their operations.
“I told him ‘That’s a good idea,’” McFatridge said. “And he said, ‘Good, you’re moving to Springfield.’
“We fell in love with Springfield. It will be hard to leave. We were there nine years. That’s where our kids grew up.”
Warm memories aside, he is already counting down the end of his weekly commute between Little Rock and Springfield.
“If we didn’t have a senior in high school, my wife and I would be down here now,” McFatridge said. “We’re going to build a home and be moving here in late summer.”
Although the Bear State moniker has strong historic ties to Arkansas, there are no plans for a corporate name change as the bank ventures into new states.
“It’s such a cool name and logo, and it just sticks,” said McFatridge. “I can see us going wherever. It’s going to be opportunistic, but it’s where the relationships lead us. Relationship is very important to us. We know people all across the U.S.”
Future deals may not necessarily dovetail with the company’s existing footprint but could as Bear State grows toward the $4 billion-$6 billion range in total assets, he said.
“We think we have the team in place to do that,” McFatridge said. “It’s set up to be a really nice run for us.”
Mark McFatridge Bio
October 2015-present:
President, CEO and Director
Bear State Financial and Bear State Bank, Little Rock
February 2012-September 2015:
President, CEO and Director
Metropolitan National Bank, Springfield
April 2010-February 2012:
Chief Operating Officer
$647.7 million-asset Guaranty Bank, Springfield
July 2008-March 2009:
President and COO
$130 million-asset OakStar Bank, a 3.5-year-old de novo lender in Springfield
September 2006-July 2008:
Market President of the Community Banks of Missouri and Western Kentucky for Regions Financial Corp. of Birmingham, Alabama, overseeing 49 retail branches, more than 300 staffers and $1.5 billion in deposits and $750 million in loans
March 2003-September 2006:
Chief Administrative Officer and Regional Financial Officer of Midwest Banking Group for Union Planters Corp. of Memphis/Regions Financial
March 2002-February 2003:
Group Project Officer of Midwest Banking Group for Union Planters
1998-2002:
Chief Operating Officer
Pleasant Run Inc., an Indianapolis nonprofit providing services for abused and neglected children
1991-1998:
Commercial Relationship Manager
Fifth Third Bank of Central Indiana
1990-1991:
Staff Accountant
Kimmerling, Myers & Co., Indianapolis
Education:
Butler University, Indianapolis
Master’s in finance, 2000
Bachelor’s in accounting, 1990