Thursday, Jan. 3, 2002 | 11:19 a.m.
Fueled by a steady stream of incoming residents and accompanying growth in the number of local businesses, bankers have benefited from the Las Vegas Valley's booming economy for more than a decade.
The year 2001 was no different. But it also might have been a turning point.
Since 1994, a total of 17 community banking organizations headquartered in Henderson or Las Vegas have come online, with four more slated to open by midyear. While all but two of the banks currently in operation have achieved profitability, some observers said this year's crop of newcomers could face a more difficult business climate than was encountered by its predecessors.
Larry Hickman, a certified public accountant who handles new bank applications for the Nevada Department of Business & Industry's Financial Institutions Division, believes the local banking market may have finally stretched to its limit.
"The Las Vegas area already has a slew of community chartered banks so I would think the growth down there is going to tighten up a lot," said Hickman, who cited a slowing economy, increased competition for bank management personnel and a diminishing pool of credit-worthy borrowers as factors that could make the market less attractive to new banking ventures.
Larry Woodrum, president and chief executive officer of BankWest of Nevada, said the presence of so many new banks could cause a feeding frenzy as both new and existing banks battle for a smaller pool of would-be loan applicants.
"It's more difficult to find applicants than it used to be," Woodrum said.
Last year's absence of mergers and big bank acquisitions such as Wells Fargo's 2000 takeover of First Security Bank could also affect the fortunes of new banks, said Tod Little, chairman and CEO of Henderson's Silver State Bank.
"Community banks had been picking up so-called disgruntled customers who left their old banks when mergers happened," Little said. "That window has closed because those customers and businesses have already transferred from the larger businesses to the smaller ones.
"There's always room for a new bank if it's well managed, but the question is in the timing. Is this as good a time to open a bank (locally) as it was five or 10 years ago? No way."
But Vince Ciminise, president of the soon-to-launch Bank of Las Vegas, said he's seen no signs of slowing demand. As evidence, he said his organization easily topped its start-up capital target of $3 million.
"We didn't start selling stock until the end of August, so in three months we raised $3.1 million in outside capital," Ciminise said. "Considering all the things going on in the economy during that time, we're very pleased that we got a little more than we set out to. The interest in well-managed new banks is still out there."
Small banks weren't the only ones to position themselves to capitalize on the local boom. Coupled with the addition of national organizations such as Washington Mutual in 2000 and Bank of the West in 2001, Clark County is now home to active branches of seven of the nation's 20 largest banking organizations.
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