Financial Services Entrepreneur Shaun R. Hayes, chief executive officer and president Allegiant Bancorp, Inc. Customer service, performance-driven, and personal attention are all great descriptions that are over-used and under-delivered by many companies. But here in St. Louis, there is an entrepreneur who takes these adjectives seriously and has turned them into absolute certainties for his customers. Never satisfied with short-term job potential or the idea of collecting a weekly paycheck, Shaun R. Hayes wanted to start his own business. His only background was banking, so in 1989, at the ripe young age of 29, he jumped in with both feet and co-founded Allegiant Bank. In looking back, says Hayes, president and CEO, “at 29 you’re young and too naive to be deterred, at 39 you’d be too scared to start, and at 49 you wouldn’t dare take the risk!” But banking is relatively safe—“not as high risk as other entrepreneurial ventures,” he says. His goal was to build a major bank in St. Louis that offered a “better way of banking.” The differentiator would be customer service—not the over-used adjective, but “truly a community bank with a hometown feel and personal service that’s exemplary.” A bank where customers are greeted in the lobby by name and accommodated with courier services, to limit interruptions to their workdays. Catering to commercial accounts with sales of $50 million or less, Allegiant Bancorp is the largest independent bank exclusively serving the St. Louis community. The bank offers a full range of commercial and retail banking products and services, as well as a trust company. Over the past few years, Allegiant’s growth has been phenomenal (39 branches, 540 employees) and has been achieved mainly through mergers and acquisitions. Last year Allegiant’s profit was $13.1 million, an 87 percent increase over the previous year. They have $2.2 billion in assets and are the fifth largest bank in St. Louis based on market share. According to Hayes, the St. Louis regional economy is not like the “boom or bust” economies of Atlanta or Chicago. Believing the area to be a great place to live and raise a family, Hayes’ goal is to promote steady economic growth of the region by helping small businesses expand and grow in the area. Like most entrepreneurs Hayes believes in working hard, expanding his horizons and having fun doing it. “If you’re not having fun,” he says, “you need to do something else!” Besides coaching his son’s baseball team and playing a little tennis, Hayes maintains an avid reading regimen. “I literally switch back and forth each week between fiction and nonfiction. If you read too much fiction, you don’t learn enough; if you read too much non-fiction, you don’t have fun. So I do both!”