Eric/Roger -
I appreciate your personal anecdotes re:LANB. I think it was a shining
star in it's own way. I have known people who worked there over the
decades and have known a few of the families of the principles including
a couple who acted as personal assistant/caretakers for the Cowan's in
their last years. I am acutely impressed with George's (and other
peers) role in the establishment and maintenance of the institution over
the decades. Most of my other anecdotal experiences are less
one-sided, but it is the nature of small town pettiness/politics/gossip
as much as anything in particular.
It *was* in many ways a "no brainer" to have a payroll the size of
LASL/LANL on deposit and a captive audience of the bulk of the employees
and local businesses as customers, so it isn't surprising that they
thrived. They held 4 different mortgages over my decades and they did
well by them, though they did sell 2 of them (as was the agreement) to a
third party which was at least moderately inconvenient (lapses/overlaps
in direct-deposit payments, escrows etc) but it all worked out. I know
of people (re: EricS experiences) who received impressive personal
treatment... my daughter worked in the Mortgage dept for several years
and holds a number of great positive anecdotes from that era.
When some trust-busting rules came along (maybe it was when UC lost the
contract?) LANB no longer held the contract's payroll and it seems like
it was soon after (<6 years) that the parent company took a large
outside investment which I *think* was the prelude to a full sale to
Enterprise Bank and Trust.
Meanwhile Del Norte (formerly Los Alamos) Credit Union and Zia Credit
Union and a couple of other trades CUs (Schools, ???) bop along as
second class players to the big banks (LANB/Enterprise included).
There are two major bank branches (buildings) evident in Los Alamos,
though I couldn't name them). Credit Unions are now offering
Mortgages, they did not last time I took one out (16 years ago).
- Steve
On 11/17/22 10:46 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
On Nov 17, 2022, at 12:23 PM, Roger Critchlow <[email protected]> wrote:
The old Los Alamos National Bank, LANB, was founded by a LANL
scientist as an antidote to big-bank homogenization. There are still
hints of that origin in
https://www.linkedin.com/company/los-alamos-national-bank/, but LANB
sold itself out to a big bank several years ago.
Yeah, btw, that really sucked.
I got to know LANB when I had first moved to Los Alamos, was getting
around only on foot, and was there sitting on their curb on a morning
before work waiting for them to open.
Some guy in a suit came by and asked if he could help me, and I said
something snotty and completely uncalled-for about bankers working
bankers hours. So he let me in and started the opening of an account
for me. That was Bill Enloe.
A few years later I needed a mortgage loan for a house, had just lost
something like 100k in two days on a Pharma that didn’t get a good
outcome on a clinical trial, which I had wanted to have for
collateral, and could not sell a house in Austin that I was in because
I had a renter who had just lost his job in the market downturn, and I
wasn’t willing to throw him out, even as the house lost about 1k in
market value per week as the whole market there was falling apart too.
Then got Salmonella or something from an egg sandwich in the ABQ
airport flying back from somewhere (Austin?) to make the loan. People
who knew me said they had never seen anyone as white as I apparently
was for several days after the first 24 hours of violent illness. I
went to the loan officer’s office, and after about a minute sitting
there talking to her, asked if I could lie on my back on her floor
while we spoke so I wouldn’t pass out. Finished the loan negotiations
in that form. When my realtor asked to look through the various
papers as part of negotiating the closure, he commented “man, you got
a really good loan”. I will protect the loan officer's name for her
own privacy, but remember it instantly in any context.
In the decades after that, I spent increasing time with George Cowan
at work and sometimes off-line, and got to learn a little more about
the history of that effort, along with some of his others. What an
extraordinary guy he was, and it showed in the things he built. He
richly deserved the Baldridge award, and much more.
The bank that acquired them does not have that kind of history, I think.
Those kinds of proud relations have always been rare, and they seem to
be damned near extinct any more.
Eric
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