Mr. Cochran: The holding company was formed in 1982 from a merger between the First National Bank of Akron and the Old Phoenix Bank in Medina. The company then assumed the dominant banking franchise in Summit County, where Akron was located, and in Medina County, where the Old Phoenix Bank was based. It has continued to grow from around $1.5 billion in assets at that point, to approximately $5 billion, due to multiple acquisitions. I joined in 1995, having come from Norwest, which is now Wells Fargo, where I had spent 28 years. My last assignment there was as a Regional President of their Nebraska operation, with assets of around $3 billion. I brought with me to FirstMerit four of my associates from Norwest: the Credit Policy Officer of Norwest's Community Banking Group, who became our Chief Credit Policy Officer; the Regional President of Norwest's Indiana/Ohio operation, who became our President and COO; the head of operations and technology from Norwest's Indiana/Ohio operation, who became our Chief Technology Officer; and finally, our Retail Banking Head who was based in Norwest's Nebraska region. Subsequently, she has gone back to Wells to run their California retail operation. The five of us came over and began to 'Norwest-ize' FirstMerit. Today, we are just over $10 billion in assets, after multiple acquisitions. The unique thing about FirstMerit is that it is very concentrated and therefore has a very strong market share in Northeast Ohio ' fundamentally the suburban markets of Cleveland. We also have a dominant market share in five counties that surround the Greater Cleveland area. Overall, we are among the top four banks in 16 of the 22 counties in which we operate. This gives us leadership in our branding and provides convenience to customers in the Greater Cleveland market and indeed, south to the Columbus market. FirstMerit is a very profitable banking organization. We have achieved consistently high performance in terms of profitability ratios; we have an 18% return on equity and a 1.55%-to-1.60% return on assets. I feel the bank has a distinct niche as it competes against the big guys of Bank One, Key Corp and National City. We deliver supercommunity- based banking, which involves surpassing local, smaller competition with our very broad sophisticated product line, and also excelling against larger national companies with highly personalized service, which I feel has been our strength. We have witnessed very good growth patterns in this marketplace and we are a very strong competitor for small and medium- sized commercial business. Approximately 50% of our loan portfolio is commercial, and we have a strong expertise in that particular niche, which is aided by the retailing sales culture of Wells/Norwest. I feel a distinctive feature of our organization is that it is very marketing- driven, with high quality customer service, local delivery and management, and a local board of directors. In addition, we have local talent to deliver to the communities that we serve.
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