Banking On Character

Community Comments

Steve Buster, CEO and president of Richmond-based Mechanics Bank, wants to come off as a regular guy who is worthy of your trust.  A regular banker that is.  With his suit jacket off, his white dress-shirt sleeves still buttoned, his maroon tie just so, Buster talks straight and uses expansive hand gestures to make his point.

But, underneath the plain-speak is a politically savvy banker who brought more than 20 years of international and domestic banking experience to Mechanics when he joined it in 2004.  Buster's office is in the bank's 30-year-old headquarters branch at Richmond's Hilltop Mall just off Int. 80. It is roomy with the expected tidiness, family photos, dark wood and leather furniture, but it feels a bit more like a way station than a CEO's high-end bunker.

Founded in 1905 as the Bank of Pinole by E.M. Downer, it became Mechanics Bank in 1907 and has been led by the Downer family ever since; E.M. Downer III is the current Mechanics board chairman.  Through the 1920s, it served Standard Oil, Santa Fe Railroad, and the Ford Motor Co. as Richmond became an industrial hub, surviving the Depression years and then thriving again as the War efforts of Kaiser ship-building drew more than 70,000 new residents to Richmond.

More importantly, although headquartered in the Bay Area, Mechanics is the largest regional bank with a significant presence in the Capitol Region -- with $2.8 billion in assets, and 5 branches in this region, it is also traded lightly on the Nasdaq OTC Bulletin Board exchange.  The bank's loan-to-asset ration is a very conservative 62% -- and its legal secured loan limit is $74 million.

According to Buster, who spent the bulk of his career with large domestic and international banks such as First Interstate Bank and Standard Chartered Bank (he was based in Singapore for five years with a staff of 3,000), it's the family-owned history that is the core of Mechanics' sustainability.

Buster proudly notes that the bank has third- and fourth-generation clients, as well as employees. "Take care of your people and they will take care of the clients and, in turn, the shareholders will be taken care of automatically," he says.

"If you think about shareholders first, as all big Wall Street banks do, there's something missing. It starts to become about quarterly returns instead of doing the right thing for the long term. A community bank has to be about people."

Does he worry about all the competition in the region, or being perceived as an outsider in hypercompetitive times?

"Sacramento is one of our best markets," he says, adding that he feels the word "hypercompetitive" might be too strong to describe the current banking scene. "We have a nice niche and can offer businesses the entire array of services that a more mature bank would have. With technology, we now can compete with any big bank."

• Share
  • Digg This
  • del.icio.us
  • Newsvine
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Furl It
  • !Y My Web
  • Google
• Email
• Print

Recommend This

Community Comments