Joliet bank eyes two new sites
First Community: Company creating independent banks

By Bob Okon
Staff writer

First Community Bank of Joliet is in the process of forming two new affiliated banks. The new locations will be in Plainfield and the Lockport-Homer Glen area.

Bank officials emphasize that these will be community banks, not branches, although they will be started with partial financing from the First Community Bank of Joliet and share some services.

First Community Bank of Joliet opened in 2004. Its deposits now total $145 million, which puts it among the top 10 of the more than 175 bank locations in Will County, said Steve Morrissette, the bank's president and chief executive officer

He said First Community Bank will look to support affiliated community banks in other communities and is ready to help start as many as five banks.

"They're going to have their own board of directors and stockholders," Morrissette said.

The directors for the new Plainfield bank will be announced soon, Morrissette said.

An announcement for the Lockport-Homer Glen project may still be a month or two away, he said.

But the boards will be modeled after that at the First Community Bank of Joliet, which is composed of local business leaders, Morrissette said.

The Plainfield board of 17 directors also will include three from the First Community Bank of Joliet. Two have connections to Plainfield, and the other is Morrissette.

The First Community Bank of Joliet also will contribute 25 to 33 percent of the start-up capital for the new banks and retain an investment in the institution as a stockholder. The remainder of initial financing will come from the local directors and stockholders from the community, Morrissette said.

A holding company was created this week to set up a structure for supporting affiliated banks.

"The holding company is not going to be like a franchise where you send the money back to McDonald's Corp.," Morrissette said. "We talked about whether First Community Bank of Joliet should open branches in other communities where we would like to do business. We felt very strongly not to."

First Community Bank of Joliet may consider branches within Joliet as a convenience for its customers, Morrissette said. But ventures into other communities will be set up as local banks.

"Each community wants its own bank and deserves its own bank," he said.

05/19/06