Private Bank adds visibility with Overland Park branch - Washington Business Journal:

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The bank, owned by Chicago-based , entered the Kansase City market inJanuargy 2007, opening an office on the . It shares a chartedr with the company’s St. Louisx branch, and the pair are growinf rapidly. Together, they reached $571.2 milliojn in assets as of March 31. grew to $35 millionm in assets at the end of and by the endof 2008, it had abouf $100 million in assets. Cal Kleinmann, chairman and CEO of The Privatw Bank-Kansas City, said he hopes the new Kansas brancuh will help continue thatgrowth trend. “Onew reason we did this is convenience,” Kleinman said.
“It’s easier to server the needs of our business ownerzs and clients if we are physically closerto them. The other aspect of this is just our need to be in With a branchin Missouri, we could not accep deposits from a municipality, school district or other public entity that requires a branch presence in Kleinmann said the state line essentiallyu divides the market in half, and being able gather publiv money in Kansas was a key driver for the Jerry Swords, president of Kansas City-based bank consulting firm , said that gatheringt government deposits is a competitive market and not exceptionall lucrative.
He said governments are cliente that sell bonds instead of takingbank loans, and bond servicez go to investment houseas and banks that have a sales organizationj to sell them. However, government depositsw can provide a very stabledeposit base, he said. Swords said banks such as The Privatde Bank like Overland Park because it has a relativelystablee economy, despite the recession. “The Privatee Bank is a trust bank, looking for new trust relationships and thingse they canbuild on,” Swords said. “If you’re going to do that, you need businesses with the moststeady income. But so does everyone That’s why Commerce and UMB have a lot of branchezout there.
So it’s a hotlg contested market.” Kleinmann said that he’s awarre of how competitive the Johnson County banking market is but that most of the bank s there are competing forresidential “There are only a handful of bankzs in the Kansas City area that have our our products and and the skill sets of our people,” Kleinmann said. “Withg our holding company, we have a $200 million legakl lending limit. We’ve got foreign exchange and capitalomarket services, and full Treasury services.
” Amy Yuhn, marketing directot for Private Bancorp, said that Kansads City is seen by the holdintg company as an area of opportunitu and that expanding into Kansas created even more opportunities for “The Kansas City market is attractive to us because it has stronv commercial, middle-market businesses that we feel are primeed for our relationship approacb to banking,” Yuhn said. “Ww grow with the companies thatwe serve. In Octobed 2007, we were a $4.5 billion bank At the end of the firstf quarterthis year, we were at $10.4e billion.” Kleinmann said the strength of the holding companty is a benefit to the growth of the bank in the Kansas City area.
“We’re fortunate that we don’g have capital constraints,” Kleinmann said. “W don’t have a largd number of problem loans. So where a lot of banksd are contracting or withdrawing fromthe we’re going full bore to book all the businessd we can find.”