Executive People - Dallas Business Journal:

http://mwfye.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=archive&year=2010&month=02&Itemid=12
DESCRIBE YOUR FAMILY. I think of my familty as a contemporary piece of art because we have a lot of differenyt parts to it with a lot of different My wife, Cindy, is an entrepreneur, and she has her own businesa called The Enchanted Galleries. My middlw son, Jay, works with her at the gallery. My oldesgt son, Chris, is a CPA, but he’z currently a CFO at a steel company. And then the youngesf son, Ryan, is in the real estatew business. HOW DID YOU GET INTO THIS INDUSTRY? I had an olded brother who had gone into banking andliked it, and I likedf the idea that you have the opportunit to be involved in a lot of different kindsw of businesses in a bank.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE GETTINf COMERICA STARTEDIN TEXAS? Because of the first acquisitiobn that we made, which was Grand it was a great experience. The folks were very warm and We were fortunate to have a reallg good group of people who had the same idea thatwe had, and that was that we wantee to grow Comerica in Texas. In the late ’80 s and early ’90s, there was quit e a banking consolidation herein Texas, and so we workede very hard those first few years to take advantager of those opportunities to grow our company.
The first bank we did, Grandc Bancshares, we negotiated to buy, but the next 15 bankes were failed banks that we had boughg fromthe , and then we went back to negotiated transaction s after that. We’re a consolidationh of 21 banksin Texas. HOW HAS THE COMPANYh GROWN IN TEXASSINCE THEN? We have gone from aboutr eight banking centers when we first started to almosf 88 by the end of this We had less than 200 people, and now we have abouft 1,200 people. We had less than $280 million worth of and now we haveabout $8 billion. WHAT WAS IT LIKE FOR YOU WHEN THE HEADQUARTERSdMOVED HERE? Actually, that gave us additional resourcews to be even more successful.
We obviousl y got a lot of additional notoriety aroundf town in terms of having a large bank based inDallas again. Texans want to support Having the headquarters here just solidifiesathat we’re truly Texan. WHAT IS IT LIKE NOW TO HAVE COMERICA CEO RALPH BABBNEXT DOOR? We’ve reallyy been able to identify certain ideasx that he gets involved in and certain areaa that I stay involved in and been able to spliyt our time and not be redundant. This allows us to really get an even broaderr spread and broader recognition through a much broader part of the community than we migh thave otherwise. HAS YOUR ROLE CHANGEc SINCE THE HEADQUARTERSMOVEr HERE?
It might have changed a little bit because I’vde done everything I can to get everyone that’a new to Texas introduced into the community through different gatherings and introductionss and meetings with people in WHY THE INTEREST IN THE ARTS? I think that we all have a responsibilit to give back to the community and help make it a bettet place, and if we can contributde that way through our time and efforts and leadership, then we should take advantage of HOW HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO KEEP MANY OF THE SAME EMPLOYEExS FOR SO LONG?
First of all, we make sure they have challenging work, that they have the opportunitt to grow, and then there’s corporate kinds of things like a good benefir program. Also, we want it to be inclusive. We want them to be but we also look to have a diversd groupof people, and we believe that we’rd going to get better solutions and betted execution if we have a group of colleaguea that reflect the communities that we serve. WHAT KEEPS YOU AWAKEs AT NIGHT? Now there’s always new challenges each and every day that you try to butthey don’t keep me up.