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By Christine Imbs
There’s an old proverb which states, “Accidents will happen.”
Fortunately for Bob Witterschein, his turned out to be a happy
one.
“I never had an interest in going into banking,” he says. “It
was purely accidental. In fact, no one in my family had any
ties to banking. My father was an executive at Monsanto. I just
assumed I’d go to work for a large company like that too.”
Now with about 26 years under his belt, this accidental banker
is CEO for Southwest Bank. And it’s a profession he says he’s
glad he stumbled upon.
“I’ve got to say I’m very happy I chose this career,” he says.
“It’s fun. So looking back, maybe it wasn’t so accidental.”
Witterschein’s introduction to banking occurred while attending
a job fair for graduating students on the campus of Saint Louis
University.
“The University encouraged us to sign up for interviews even
if we weren’t interested in a particular industry because it
was good practice,” he says. “So I set up an interview with
what was then County Bank of St. Louis.”
During the interview, Witterschein discovered that many of the
courses he’d taken in graduate school were related to banking.
What’s more, the bank had a training program they were hoping
to fill.
“I was told that ultimately this program would lead to a position
in lending, he says.” “Once I found out what a commercial lending
officer did, I decided it sounded a lot more fun than pushing
a bunch of numbers around in the Treasury Department at Monsanto.”
Witterschein joined the bank in 1981. He was hired by Drew Bauer,
the originator of the training program and now chairman of Southwest
Bank. When County Bank was bought out by Commerce Bank Shares
in 1984, Bauer left and put together a group to purchase the
old Southwest Bank. He asked Witterschein to join them.
“It was a scary move for me at the time. I had a wife, a house
payment and an eight-month-old baby,” he recalls. “Yet here
I was taking a risk by leaving a very stable job to really move
into a start-up position. But it certainly paid off.”
If given the opportunity to do anything else, Witterschein says
he’d still lean toward banking.
“I could work on my golf game, I suppose,” he says laughing.
“But really, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve met a lot of wonderful
people with very diverse backgrounds. And I’ve been able to
finance a lot of businesses that have become very successful.”
Witterschein says he believes the backbone of the economy in
St. Louis as well as the nation is small business.
“We take care of the small and middle-size businesses which,
by the way, are very entrepreneurial. A lot of banks don’t do
this,” he says. “But if an entrepreneur has a good idea that
is competent, and if he has good management skills, we’ll take
a little bit of a ride with him to see how it pans out. As a
result, we’ve found that some of our best customers are loans
we made that typically other banks may have declined because
they were a little too entrepreneurial in nature.”
Looking back over his career, Witterschein says there’s no question
that his father was a major influence in him being where he
is today.
“His philosophy was to get a good education, work hard and make
your own breaks. If you do that, then you’ll be successful,”
he comments. “I think with all I’ve done, I’ve proven him absolutely
correct. Hard work and perseverance pays off. And that’s the
thing I’m most proud of. I’ve proven my father right.”
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TalkingPOINTS
RAISED: Kirkwood
FAMILY: Wife, Jill; two
daughters and a son
EDUCATION: BSBA in Finance
and an MBA in Accounting from Saint Louis University
READS: Mostly business
magazines and newspapers
FAVORITE MUSICIAN: Either
the Rolling Stones or Beatles
FAVORITE WAY TO RELAX:
“Golf, although I don’t know how relaxing it is, because
it can be as frustrating as anything you’ll ever do.”
FAVORITE TRAVEL DESTINATION:
Golf destinations like Scotland, England, and Ireland
THOUGHTS ON ST. LOUIS:
“The quality of life here can’t be found in major cities.”
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