Gene R. Todd has joined Clayton-based First Bank as managing director for the Trust and Wealth Management division. Todd is also the bank’s affiliated broker at First Brokerage America, LLC.
First Bank is one of the largest privately-owned banks in the country with $6.23 billion in assets and 130 locations in Missouri, Illinois, Florida and California.
Todd said he is proud to work with a diverse group of people who make up the Wealth and Management team at First Bank, with the majority being women. However, he said, African Americans are not always represented in his clientele. This is not the case in larger metropolitan cities like Chicago, Atlanta and New York.
“In St. Louis, we have not found a lot minorities who have over a million dollars and are willing to have us invest it,” he said.
Timothy Lathe, president and CEO at First Bank, personally recruited Todd from Cleveland-based Key Bank, hoping to grow the Wealth and Management division.
“I basically followed my old boss here,” Todd said of Lathe.
Lathe left his former position as executive vice president and national sales director at Key Bank in April 2013. Todd worked under Lathe as director of sales on the private banking side. He was responsible for developing and executing sales strategies that would generate new clients. He served as segment liaison to 30 wealth sales advisors across the country and was responsible for creating Key Bank’s HNW insurance platform.
Before discovering that wealth management is the fastest-growing and most lucrative area in financial services, Todd had spent the majority of his career working as an investment banker and in capital marketing.
Prior to Key Bank, Todd served as senior managing director and head of the equity sponsor group at PNC Bank. There he managed a $2 billion portfolio comprised of 140 portfolio companies.
After graduating from the University of Michigan with a MBA, he landed a job on Wall Street in 1995 working at Morgan Stanley & Co. as an investment banker focusing exclusively on leveraged buyout firms.
“That was when the tech and telecomm industries were really starting to take off. We did the biggest deals,” he said of Morgan Stanley & Co. “We financed the fastest-growing companies.”
He said he learned a lot during those eight years working alongside some of the best financiers like Joseph Perella, known as one of the greatest investment bankers of all time.
It all came crashing down near the end of 2000, he said, when the “tech and telecomm bubble burst,” followed by the recession and 911. He said people were getting laid off and deals dried up.
“New York went from being one of the greatest places and experiences that I’ve ever had to an absolute nightmare,” he said.
St. Louis, by contrast, is happy to have him.
“We are excited about Gene joining First Bank and leading our Trust and Wealth Management team,” said Terry McCarthy, president and CEO of First Banks, Inc., the parent of First Bank.
“He is an accomplished financial services executive with over 20 years of experience in multiple disciplines, including wealth management, brokerage and investment banking.”
Follow this reporter on Twitter: @BridjesONeil.
