Employees, private investors lead Citizens Bank buyout

For all of Nancy Ruyle’s life, Citizens Bank of Rogersville has been the family business. Now, after 40 years of work and with no family members in place to take the reins, a group of local investors has stepped forward to purchase the bank.

A roughly 40-investor group led by Brian VanFosson, the new president and a 16-year veteran of the bank, closed on the purchase of Citizens Bank of Rogersville Aug. 2. Both VanFosson and Ruyle declined to disclose the sale price.

Ruyle said the sale of the business was prompted by her and her husband’s plans to retire.

Her husband, Executive Vice President Charlie Ruyle, has helped run the company for 14 years.

“He’s more retired than I am right now,” Ruyle said, laughing, from her executive office.
Ruyle said she plans to stay on with the company through the remainder of the year, assisting with the transition process but working as needed.

“We’ve had a family member in the bank for a long time, but we’ve had no family members interested, so our course was to try and find somebody who could take it over but also keep it the way it has been,” Ruyle said.

Ruyle and VanFosson said the bank would keep its name and both were glad it would remain an independent, locally run company.

“It is a situation where the community rallied around myself and rallied around saving the bank from being purchased,” VanFosson said, adding two other banks were bidding to buy Citizens Bank but he and Ruyle both declined to name the other competitors. “The board ultimately decided to take our bid. It is truly what I think is a significant and unique situation in that the community supported keeping this an independent locally owned bank.”  

VanFosson said the roughly 40 local investors who worked to establish the bank’s new holding company, Wildcat Bancshares Inc., now own 100 percent of bank assets.
According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the bank holds deposits of $56.9 million, representing 0.72 percent of the Springfield metropolitan statistical area market share, making it the 27th largest bank in the area.  

“My great-grandfather started it in 1908. My grandfather was involved; my father was involved; and then I became involved. My husband Charlie came here in 1999 after retiring from Dairy Farmers of America,” Ruyle said, adding she and her husband plan to travel in retirement and spend more time with their grandchildren.

She said the Wildcat investors presented her family the highest bid, making the decision easy.

“It turned out the best way possible,” Ruyle said.

VanFosson said he learned the business was for sale three days before Christmas and immediately set up an informational meeting with potential investors on Dec. 26.

During the past 10 years, VanFosson said he’s had a few informal conversations with community members to gauge interest in someday owning the bank. When he heard it was for sale, he went into action.

VanFosson said the transaction was unique because no single investor owns more than 10 percent of the holding company.

“That appealed to a lot of people. Everyone felt that if no one had more than 10 percent then they’d have a significant voice in the ownership,” he said. “Typically, when these things happen, (the bank) gets swallowed up by another institution and the hometown bank goes away, never to be seen again. Because of the support that came about, that didn’t happen here.”  

VanFosson said Wildcat investors comprise six bank employees including vice presidents Lisa Smith and Scott Speight – a former employee who returned to Citizens Bank after working most recently for Great Southern Bank – as well as VanFosson’s wife, Elaine Maddux, a former bank examiner.

Ralph Mires, managing director of Lenexa, Kan.-based CrossFirst Advisors, the firm that handled securing the regulatory approval on behalf of the buyers from the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, said the experience and industry knowledge of VanFosson and Maddux made the application process run smoothly.

“There is a lot of management expertise, banking expertise and business expertise within the management group and ownership group and directors of the bank,” Mires said.

Mires said he’s seen the regulatory process both from his company’s viewpoint and as a former regulator and most of the time when an independent community bank is sold, a larger bank is the buyer.

“This was somewhat unusual in that what you had was a group of investors that came together and acquired this bank and now it will continue to be locally owned and locally managed,” he said. “This is what I would call a real success story for community banking and for the community of Rogersville.”

VanFosson said growth is on the mind of the new owners and additional branches could come online down the road but nobody is in a rush.

“That would be a goal in the future,” he said. “For now, I think we’re happy maintaining the business we are doing while continuing to look for strategic opportunities."[[In-content Ad]]