|
|
|
BNH Business and Civic Awards: SMALL BUSINESSPERSON OF THE YEAR
Second Time Around
Starting over again at an age when most bankers have long since retired, Joe Ciaburri is working to make his commercial Bank of Southern Connecticut a hometown powerhouse
|
Business New Haven
2/2/2004
By: Karen Singer
|
A quarter century ago, Joseph V. Ciaburri founded the Bank of New Haven, a commercial bank that garnered national attention for its success in attracting small and medium-sized businesses with personalized services.
Five years ago, Ciaburri came out of retirement to help launch a similar bank, and, he hoped, to give wing to an even more ambitious dream.
"We want to go all the way from New Haven to Old Saybrook with branches along the shoreline, and from the New London bank to Old Saybrook to Rhode Island," says Ciaburri, chairman and CEO of Southern Connecticut Bancorp, a New Haven-based holding company and parent corporation of the Bank of Southern Connecticut and SCB Capital Inc.
The Bank of Southern Connecticut began operations in October 2001, became profitable late last year and recently announced a ten-percent stock dividend. Last year its assets rose 59 percent from $35,364,970 to $56,307,113.
The only home-owned commercial bank in New Haven, the Bank of Southern Connecticut has about 1,000 shareholders, 26 employees, a main office downtown and branches in Branford and on the Woodbridge/New Haven border. Ciaburri's son, Michael, is president and COO of the bank and its Southern Connecticut Bancorp parent.
The holding company has a pending application with the state's Department of Banking to open a commercial bank de novo in New London to be known as the Bank of Southeastern Connecticut.
"The business climate in any city is enhanced with having a commercial bank, because that bank is going to deal with local businesses," says Ciaburri, a septuagenarian who grew up a few blocks from his current office. "The Chases and Fleets are good banks, but they're commercial gatherers. They might take in $10 million in deposits and only invest $1 million in New Haven."
Providing service-oriented local investments is Ciaburri's strategy for the Bank of Southern Connecticut, just as it was 25 years ago when he founded the Bank of New Haven.
Opening that first bank in 1979 was the culmination of a dream, and a role Ciaburri had been preparing for his entire life.
New Haven native Ciaburri began his career in 1947, working after school at the Community Bank, located on the corner of Chapel and Olive streets. The 16-year-old Ciaburri was a messenger whose tasks included delivering checks and mail and writing bank statements.
Ciaburri kept the part-time job until 1951, when he was drafted and sent to Labrador during the Korean War. Returning home, he earned an economics degree at New Haven State Teachers College [predecessor of Southern Connecticut State University] while working as a bank teller, bookkeeper, loan and discount clerk and computer operator at First National Bank on Church Street in New Haven.
"I started from the bottom and pretty much learned every banking job on the way up," Ciaburri says. He also earned a master's degree in economics and liberal studies from Wesleyan University, and became the only non-Ivy League-pedigreed member of an executive training program at the First National Bank.
"Each job I took was one step forward to be qualified to be a bank president and open a bank," Ciaburri says. And by the mid-1970s, he felt prepared to take the plunge.
"It takes a least a year and a half to start a bank," Ciaburri explains. "Number one is you have put together a strong board of directors and raise at least $5 million (in the late 1970s the figure was $2 million). You have to have a charter. You have to have regulatory approval, and you have to put together a strong board made up of people who have business knowledge, are entrepreneurial and are willing to give time to running a bank with much due diligence."
Ciaburri was able to harness all those elements, get his first bank up and running - and make it profitable.
"During the ten years I was with the Bank of New Haven, it was chosen as one of the three best commercial banks in the country by Inc. magazine," Ciaburri says. Rhode Island-based Citizens Bank purchased the bank in 1996.
After retiring, Ciaburri became director of development at Southern Connecticut State University, where he had been an adjunct professor.
"I decided to quit, for a year and a half," Ciaburri says. "Then a group of individuals, led by my son Michael, who had his own little investment boutique and was doing bank consulting, came to me and said, 'There are no commercial banks in New Haven. You really ought to start one.'"
Ciaburri credits his son with "inspiring" him to take on the assignment.
"We raised $11.7 million in capital in 17 days," Ciaburri says. Opening a new commercial bank was easier the second time around "because there wasn't any competition."
Indeed, Ciaburri sees an even greater need for his type of bank now than in the late 1970s, when small commercial banks thrived throughout Connecticut. Their numbers dwindled with the bank failures of the 1980s and the consolidations of the 1990s, which left many communities without any.
"There's nothing like having a hometown, home-owned commercial bank," Ciaburri says, noting there were 15 hometown banks in New Haven when he started the Bank of New Haven. "Today there's only one left, the New Haven Savings Bank, and they're a mutual savings bank, taking in savings and making mortgages," he says.
The Bank of Southern Connecticut handles "some residential mortgages, but mostly commercial loans" in New Haven and surrounding towns, according to Southern Connecticut Bancorp vice chairman Elmer F. Laydon, who chairs the loan committee.
More than a third of the bank's 1,500 customers are business clients, ranging from mom-and-pop shops to multimillion-dollar enterprises.
"Two companies do over $30 million, and there are several in the $20 million range," Ciaburri says. "We also have some that do $200,000 a year."
Ciaburri touts the bank's diverse customer base.
"We're very strong in the Asian-American, Hispanic-American and all the other communities, and we've done a lot of outreach," he says. "We're also the number one SBA [U.S. Small Business Administration] lender in our peer group."
Ciaburri's commitment to diversity also can be seen in his choice of holding company directors. They include Joshua Sandman, a University of New Haven sociology professor who owns Deitsch Plastic Co. in West Haven, and Mashantucket Pequot tribal manager G. Leon Jacobs.
But it's the way the bank does business that makes it a standout, according to Susan Monti, managing director of Ostrowski & Co., a bank advisory firm in Cheshire.
The Bank of Southern Connecticut is a "high-touch service-oriented institution," Monti says. "They're really hands-on, and work with customers to provide them not only with the lending products they need, but also with decisions made locally."
Larger banks typically offer only off-the-shelf products and formula-based decisions made from a central office.
"We compete with service," Ciaburri says. "That's what people want. They want attention. They don't want to stand in long lines. They don't want to be a number.
"You're treated with the ultimate in care when you come into our place, whether you're worth $100 or $15 million," adds Ciaburri. "When you call my office you get me. That tells you something."
The personal approach is effective in attracting loyal customers.
"I couldn't do what I'm doing without them," says Tony Antonakis, owner and manager of the Greek Olive, a new Long Wharf eatery replacing the former Howard Johnson's restaurant.
A former Bank of New Haven customer, Antonakis presented his business plan to Bank of Southern Connecticut officials as soon as the location became available.
"They knew me. They trusted me. They knew this area was good, and with Ikea coming, that's a home run," Antonakis says. He received a $500,000 loan in January 2003 and opened his restaurant six months later. "I didn't try any other financial institutions because restaurants are high-risk."
The Bank of Southern Connecticut also went to bat for first-time business entrepreneur Gwen Petti.
"They supported us for a $150,000 SBA loan," says Petti, co-owner of Petti's Pantry, a gourmet market and deli in Westville that opened late last year. "Without them this would not be possible."
Paul Jacobs, who runs a bail-bond business, often spends an hour and a half at the bank drinking espresso and chatting with employees. Another former Bank of New Haven customer, Jacobs joined the Bank of Southern Connecticut last year, following a bad experience at another bank.
"I was having trouble making a deposit, and told them I wanted a quick transfer of all the trustee accounts - $1.6 million in all - to the Bank of Southern Connecticut," Jacobs says.
He's pleased with his decision - and with the service, which sometimes even includes a meal.
"One day, Michael [Ciaburri] invited me to lunch at the Quinnipiac Club," Jacobs says. "I wouldn't go to another bank."
During his Bank of New Haven years, Ciaburri often fostered his interest in the arts in ways benefiting the community at large as well as bank customers. As president of New Haven Symphony Orchestra, he organized charity events with big names such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emmanuel Ax. The bank lobby once served as a stage for a Connecticut Ballet performance of excerpts of The Nutcracker. He also sponsored the first jazz concert on the New Haven Green, featuring the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Such cultural activities may eventually become part of the Bank of Southern Connecticut repertoire.
But the main focus at the moment is on growth.
The Bank of Southeastern Connecticut will use the same modus operandi as its New Haven sibling, but be headed by "high level" New Londoners, according to Ciaburri.
"We first need to get the capital," he says. "We got it for the Bank of Southern Connecticut in a bad stock market, just a couple of weeks before 9/11. This next $15 million should be easier to get because we have credibility and performance."
He expects a public offering by late spring or early summer, and the bank opening in New London as early as September.
Ciaburri says he hopes there will be 12 to 15 branches of both banks [six or seven each] from New Haven to Rhode Island within the next three years.
"I see the business climate getting better every day, and our companies doing better every day," he says. "I'm seeing companies spending more for capital improvements over the last seven months. And I think by the end of the year, the economy, which is doing well, is going to bloom: the service sector, manufacturing, housing - all of it."
If he's right, the holding company's expansion plan may well come to fruition.
"The key is market and timing," says Ostrowski & Co.'s managing director Monti. "If he can create the same business model in a similar market it ought to work."
State banking department spokesperson James Hechman also is among those giving Ciaburri the thumbs-up.
"He is a very good banker, and he's very interested in helping small businesses in his marketplace," Hechman says.
Monti believes Ciaburri's biggest obstacles include rate changes and competition from imitators.
Ciaburri welcomes the challenges.
"We're proud of our accomplishments and what we've done to help the economic climate of greater New Haven," Ciaburri says. He adds that he has no intention of quitting, or slowing down, any time soon.
"I'm 74, but feel like 47," he says. "I can't wait to get up in the morning to get to our branch."
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
