Johns starts as Mercantile regional president

As it is about to unveil a new name, Mercantile Bank has a new top executive here.

Charles N. Johns is the new regional president for Mercantile Bank in the Springfield and Branson markets.

Firstar Corporation, the Milwaukee-based parent company of Mercantile Bank, Jan. 18 named Johns to the post. Johns most recently served as regional president of operations overseeing Mercantile offices in central and northern Missouri. Steve Harmon, previous regional president here, left Mercantile to join Citizens National Bank of Tulsa in Tulsa, Okla.

Johns moved to Springfield from Columbia, where he worked for Mercantile for 1 1/2 years. Prior to his position there, Johns served as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Mercantile banks in Topeka, Kan., and Washington, near St. Louis.

"From what we know about Springfield and from what we've seen, it's a real nice town. It's got lots of traffic, though," Johns said. "But it's an absolute indicator of Springfield's growth ... the streets are full," Johns said.

Johns said the Springfield banking market is different from the markets he has previously worked in because of the abundance of independent banks here.

"The number of banks here is sizable for the size of community we have ... that happens in markets that are growing and have prosperity," Johns said. "That provides competition; everyone has to fill their niche."

Johns said bank customers have more banking choices than they used to, even though the number of bank charters has decreased in recent years due to the rapid consolidation in the banking industry. Mercantile Bancorp. Inc. acquired Mark Twain Bank and Roosevelt Financial Group in 1996, at the time making it the largest bank as measured by deposits in Springfield and Missouri's other two largest markets. Firstar acquired Mercantile in May 1999 in a deal valued at the time of its announcement at about $10.6 billion.

"I think sometimes those who express concerns about mergers and consolidations in the banking industry lose sight of the fact that in reality, the customer really has more choices now ... there are many more places to do banking, and not just physical banks: ATMs, Internet banking, voice banking; it's just easier to do banking now," Johns said.

He said Mercantile has stayed in touch with its customers since the acquisition and is continuing to give them the kind of service they expect in order to minimize customer loss.

"We'll continue to provide good service and improve on it, and we'll back it up with a service guarantee," Johns said.

After the Firstar acquisition, Springfield's Citizens National Bank President and CEO Frank Hilton said his bank would look for dissatisfied customers and dissatisfied employees to pick up as a result of the acquisition.

"I am aware of several people who filtered out of Mercantile Bank (since the acquisition) ... as it turned out, we didn't hire any of them. I would say I was right on the count that this merger would not have (as much impact as) the NationsBank merger with Boatmen's Bank did in 1997," Hilton said.

The transition to Firstar has gone smoothly, Johns said, due largely to Firstar's commitment to community banking.

While he's not sure of the exact date, Johns said Mercantile will change its signs throughout Springfield to Firstar within a few months.

"The change you'll see is in name only; we completed the merger last September," Johns said. He said after Mercantile takes on the Firstar name, the banks will begin offering the Firstar guarantee, which is a payment of $5 to bank customers for errors on bank statements, out-of-order ATMs, failure to return customer calls before 3 p.m. the same day, or waits longer than five minutes in a teller line.

Firstar President and CEO Jerry Grundhofer announced after the acquisition intentions to cut Mercantile expenses by 19 percent, or $169 million a year. Johns said the cuts have been achieved by cutting expenses on the corporate level with department consolidation, branch closings in markets where Firstar and Mercantile both existed and cutting out the duplication of duties in some markets.

"With two companies that are almost equal in size to each other, you're going to have some duplication of duties such as law firms and marketing and advertising agencies and departments. And when you add up the money saved from closing branches in markets where there were Mercantile and Firstar offices, you're going to save some big-time money," Johns said.