Business View Magazine | Volume 9, Issue 1

67 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 1 assets and our loan portfolio was $17 million. That’s not a small bank, that’s a micro bank.” Immediately following the acquisition, the bank started working on growth – not an easy task in a community which at the time had five other small locally owned banks and three larger locally owned banks that controlled the market. “Here we are, this tiny bank with more capital than the bank had before, but without a huge legal lending limit. We couldn’t really go after big deals,” says Shettlesworth, “and so we were trying to get these loans, trying to increase the earnings for the bank and get some momentum going.” He describes losing out on loans to larger competitors during a peak time for the market, knowing they would not compete with longer amortizations and lower rates offered by the competitors. With slow and patient growth, Main Bank found itself in a unique position in 2009, when Albuquerque was hit with the recession. Shettlesworth recounts, “Here is where the lucky part comes, we had started at the end of 2005 and we didn’t have time to put many bad loans on our books; we did have some problems, but very small in comparison. When 2009 comes around, we are still lending and all those competitors that we were losing those mediocre loans to, they all went under regulatory orders. Two of those large banks failed and that totally disrupted the market.” As they continued their careful and strategic growth, Main Bank once again found itself in a position to acquire a struggling bank, taking over Bank 1st in 2012. Shettlesworth explains, “We, a small bank, were able to get in there and understand what the problems were and address those immediately. It took us about 12 months to clean up that portfolio, and we kept going from there.” Today, there are only three banks headquartered in Albuquerque, with Main Bank the primary local MA IN BANK Alan Shettlesworth, President & CEO