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I always enjoy visiting with bankers at the state conventions, but I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge a special place in my heart for the Minnesota Bankers Association, where I worked as communications director from 1989 to 1991. MBA hosted it’s 120th annual convention at Madden’s Resort on Gull Lake near the Brainerd in central Minnesota earlier this week. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a day at the convention, listening to speakers and visiting with MBA members and staff.

We will have coverage of the convention in the July 15 edition of NorthWestern Financial Review.

I can’t believe it has been 20 years since the MBA celebrated its 100th anniversary. I remember that convention well. I was still working as editor of this magazine at the time. To preview the convention in our May 20, 1989 edition, I did a big interview with Truman Jeffers, the long-time executive vice president of the MBA. Our meeting coverage ran a month later,in the June 17 edition. There were some 1,400 people at that convention, conducted in Saint Paul at the Radisson Hotel.

L. William Seidman, who was chairman of the FDIC at the time, was the keynote speaker. Seidman noted that the pace of mergers and acquisitions in Minnesota exceeded the national average during the late 1980s. He also praised steps taken in the late 1980s to move Minnesota from a unit banking state to a state that accommodated interstate banking.

Seidman said at the time: “Although Minnesota is a unit banking state, five detached facilities may now be established within 100 miles of the main office, and greater expansion can be facilitated through mergers. This is a good start, but I hope to see even more liberal intrastate rules down the road. Unit banking laws have been one of the factors that have contributed to the banking problems of the last few years by limiting efforts to diversity risk and avoid concentration.”

Bill Sands, president of Western Bank in Saint Paul, was president of MBA in 1988-89. During his speech at the convention, he said MBA had made great strides in working cooperatively with the Independent Bankers of Minnesota.

The convention featured many other well-known personalities as speakers, including Debora Howell, who was the editor of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press/Dispatch newspaper, Bart Star, the former NFL player and coach, and former Minnesota Governor Elmer Andersen.

One of the convention highlights was a speech from another former governor, Harold E. Stassen, who, amazingly, also addressed the MBA convention on its 50th anniversary! Another interesting speech came via taped telephone message from Henry G. Borgerding of North American State Bank in Belgrade, Minn. Like the MBA, Borgerding was celebrating his 100th birthday in 1989. And so was North American State Bank!

Jim Hearon, president of National City Bank in Minneapolis, was named MBA president at that convention for the 1989-90 year. I left NorthWestern Financial Review in September 1989 to work for MBA as communications director. Jim and I worked together quite a bit during his presidency. I appreciated working with Jim; he opened a lot of doors for me in my profession.

Bill Seidman is one of the most interesting people I have ever had the privilege of covering. He died yesterday at the age of 88. News reports said he suffered a brief illness before passing away in Albuquerque, N.M.

Seidman became chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1985, the same year I started covering banking. By then, he had considerable high-level political experience. A native of Grand Rapids, Mich., he came to Washington D.C. when Rep. Gerald Ford of Michigan was named vice president. When Ford quickly became president, Seidman found himself setting up shop in the White House. He worked with Alan Greenspan, who chaired President Ford’s Council of Economic Advisors.

At that time, one of the big issues Seidman worked on was lending to less developed countries. Seidman was part of the regime that encouraged it, a position he later said he regretted. In the 1993 book he authored, “Full Faith and Credit,” he writes the “recycling of petro-dollars” was viewed as prudent policy. In hindsight, he writes, they should simply have encouraged oil producing countries to make the loans directly, rather than through the American banking system.

Seidman left Washington during the Carter years and early Reagan years. When William Isaacs resigned as head of the FDIC in 1985, Seidman was asked to become the 14th leader of the agency that was relatively obscure at the time. As the ag, oil and real estate crisis would develop, the agency soon would gain prominence as it resolved more than 200 bank failures a year by the end of the decade.

In “Full Faith and Credit” (which, sadly, appears to be out of print), Seidman notes that one of his first issues as FDIC chairman was dealing with Citicorp’s decision to reserve for 30 percent of its loans to less developed countries, an action precipitated by the policy Seidman had helped to develop during the Ford years.

Seidman was in the thick of the banking crisis, which started in Texas and then moved to New England. At the same time, banks in the Midwest were suffering from the ag crisis. Meanwhile, things were falling apart in the savings and loan industry and when the Resolution Trust Corporation was set up to handle assets from failed S&Ls, Seidman was named head of that agency, too.

When one thinks back on the late 1980s, it becomes amazing to realize the extent to which the White House and its U.S. Treasury Department were not engaged in the financial stress of the day. It is a much different scenario today where Treasury and President Obama (for better or for worse) are in the thick of the issues. In the late 1980s, the head of the FDIC/RTC was the most powerful player in the financial services regulatory game.

Seidman had a sharp wit and spoke candidly with bankers and reporters. He named his dog “Proxmire” after the Wisconsin Senator who headed the Banking Committee in the late 1970s and again in the late 1980s. He got into a political fight with President Bush’s Chief of Staff when he ridiculed a John Sununu plan to pay for the S&L clean up with a fee for opening bank accounts. He called it the “Reverse Toaster Tax,” playing off the idea that banks used to give customers premiums for opening accounts. The label stuck in the press and Sununu’s plan was dead.

Bill Seidman was the right guy at the right time, in terms of bank regulation. He was an accountant by training, so he understood the numbers. He had been a bank director. He also had owned a television station, so he understood what it was to comply with federal regulations. And he had some political savvy. He was very accessible to the press. We ran a feature on him in December of 1987, including a cover picture of him on the balcony of his office, with the Washington Monument in the background.

After he left the FDIC, he spoke to banker groups many times, and made hundreds of appearances on television as an expert analyst on financial and banking issues. I reviewed “Full Faith and Credit” shortly after it came out. I mailed him a copy, which ran in our Oct. 16, 1993 edition, and he sent me back a flattering hand-written note.

A couple of conclusions Seidman draws are worth reviewing, and seem particularly timely despite having been published 16 years ago. Consider: “Do not try to achieve social goals such as community reinvestment, minority lending, publicly supported housing, etc., through private-sector financial institutions.”

And, at the conclusion of his book, he writes: “The accomplishments of the United States of America are unmatched. Our future is bright. We have the American advantage: We are the freest people in the world. There is more opportunity for our people to move up economically and educationally than in any other country in the world. We have the skill and abilities of a multiracial nation. Our innovation and flexibility make us the leader in the industries of the future. If we do not allow ourselves to be destroyed by voting more from the federal treasury than we are willing to provide in taxes, our success will continue.”

Today is the 17th anniversary of NFR Communications, the company that publishes NorthWestern Financial Review.I remember March 4, 1992 well. Bob Cronin and I signed several documents in a meeting with Paul Blackburn and a couple of attending attorneys. Paul had owned NorthWestern Financial Review magazine for five years. When he bought it, the magazine was called Commercial West, a weekly magazine that had been around since 1901. Paul bought Commercial West from Spencer Dean, who was my first boss at the magazine, which I joined in 1985.

Shortly after buying Commercial West, Paul purchased its rival, The Northwestern Banker, from Ben Haller, who had edited the monthly magazine for decades. In the fall of 1988, Paul merged Commercial West and The Northwestern Banker into a new magazine he called NorthWestern Financial Review. The combined magazine was published twice a month.

I left Commercial West in 1989 to work for the Minnesota Bankers Association, but returned to the NorthWestern Financial Reviewin late 1991. I always liked the magazine and about two months into my new stint as editor, I commented to Paul: “If you ever want to sell the magazine, be sure to let me know.” To my surprise, he responded: “You want to buy the magazine? Make me an offer.” After the shock wore off, I thought about how I might put together an offer. Bob Cronin was the magazine’s well-known advertising sales executive who had worked at Ben Haller’s side for years. He joined Paul’s company when Paul purchased The Northwestern Banker. Bob was about my same age; we talked about it and decided to submit a bid to Paul to purchase the magazine; Bob and I would be 50-50 partners.

By year-end 1991, we had a verbal agreement. Bob and I were each able to scrape up enough for a down payment and Paul was kind enough to finance most of the sale price. March 4 we signed the papers and the magazine was ours, forming the nucleus of a new company we called NFR Communications.

1992 was a tough time to buy a magazine covering banking. The industry was still stinging from the remnants of the ag crisis and the S&L industry collapse of the 1980s. Congress passed two major laws — FIRREA in 1989 and FDICIA in 1991 — that substantially changed bank regulation. The economy was in a recession and FDIC premiums were on the rise. (Amazing how things never change.)

People sometimes ask me if I have heard from any of the old gang. I have not heard from Spender Dean since the late 1980s, and I have only talked to Paul Blackburn a couple of times since the sale. Bob and I paid off his loan on schedule but since then we haven’t had any contact with him. Bob was a tremendous business partner, although he sold me his half of the businesses in 1996. We continued to work together for another couple of years on a contract basis. These days, we remain friends and I see him at the annual convention of the Iowa Bankers Association, where he is usually exhibiting as a representative of a respected industry vendor. Ben Haller passed away in October 2007, and I miss him.

Owning and operating NorthWestern Financial Review magazine these last 17 years has been a tremendous blessing for me. Readers and advertisers have continued to support the magazine, and I have thoroughly enjoyed covering the industry and running a publishing company. NorthWestern Financial Review remains the mainstay of the company, although we have added an important custom publishing component to the business. Currently, the economy is in tough shape and revenue at NFR Communications is lower than previous years, but today is still a great anniversary and I look forward to the next 17 years.

Tom Herbst worked for Carl Pohlad for more than 40 years, retiring in 2005 as CEO of Pohlad’s Marquette Financial Companies. Herbst, who now lives in Florida, continues to serve on the company’s board of directors.

Herbst said he bought more than 100 banks with Pohlad over the years. “We did a lot of acquisitions,” Herbst explained in a telephone interview. “We liked to go out and meet with bankers; oftentimes we did it on Saturday.” Early in his career, they bought banks in Montana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and surrounding states.

“Carl and I would fly off to a town and negotiated a deal when we were there, oftentimes right on a sheet of paper. I can even remember a time where we bought a bank where he wrote the deal on the back of a napkin.

“This was back before due diligence was done as it is today,” Herbst said. “Times have changed. You met with the people in the bank, you talked about recent examinations and how things were going. Carl stuck to his word, and when he had a handshake, that was the deal.”

Pohlad was involved with several businesses in addition to banking, including bottling, transportation and real estate. Herbst explained that Pohlad maintained distinct business lines. “Their accounts weren’t even with our banks,” Herbst said.

Herbst said Pohlad had a good relationship with regulators. “That came about in 1982 when he bought the F&M Savings Bank in Minneapolis,” Herbst elaborated. “Here were multi-billion-dollar banks that were trying to buy it and in the end, our Marquette, which was maybe half-a-billion-dollar bank at the time, and we acquired it. We were a fraction of the size of these others and we are the ones that ultimately got it. I don’t know that the regulators initially wanted us to have it, but in the end we were just tenacious enough. We struck the deal and it worked out well. And it worked out well for the regulators.

“From that point, he built a reputation with the regulators in the different agencies. They called upon Carl quite often on transactions that were of significant size. They respected his ability and how he operated businesses. He was proud of that.”

Herbst said their biggest regret was a deal they were working in 1989 to buy two troubled bank holding companies in Texas: Texas American Bancshares, Inc., Fort Worth and National Bancshares Corp., of San Antonio. Pohlad and Herbst thought they had a deal but things fell through in the end. The acquisition would have added more than $7 billion to the Pohlad organization. “Those two organizations we thought we had bought and we didn’t end up getting them. And it wasn’t for anything we did wrong. That was probably my biggest disappointment,” he said.

“He’ll be missed by a lot of people,” Herbst summarized. “He loved banking and he loved people.”

Pohlad was on the cover of Commercial West, the predecessor to NorthWestern Financial Review, on August 4, 1973. He shared the cover with O. Jay Tomson, who was executive vice president at Marquette. The magazine was covering the opening of a new Marquette office in the brand new IDS Tower in the heart of downtown Minneapolis.

Today, Tomson is chairman of First Citizens National Bank in Mason City, Iowa. He worked with Pohlad for nearly five years.

“He was an extremely fair man to work for,” Tomson said. “He was pretty much laissez faire. He expected you to do your job and to consult with him. If I would come to him with something, he would say, ‘is this a policy question or is this something you should be taking care of?’ You learned very early what not to bother him about.

“If you wanted to see him, the best time to see him was 6:30 in the morning at the Minneapolis Athletic Club before his mind got cluttered with the cares of the day.

“He was a nice man to work for. He was helpful to me, when I left he was supportive of me.”

Pohlad was on the cover of November 20, 1993 edition of NorthWestern Financial Review. I remember visiting with Mr. Pohlad as we shot the photo in his office. He was always very gracious to us. My best memories of him, however, were covering some of the conferences the correspondent department at Marquette use to host for community bankers. At one such conference in the 1980s, Pohlad tossed baseballs out into the audience. One shot took out a few pieces of the glass chandelier in the ballroom. Pohlad laughed it off and everyone had a good time.

Old habits die hard, so for me, the first Thursday of December will always seem like the day for the Duck Dinner. That was the familiar name for the executive management conference Norwest’s correspondent banking department used to host. It was a full-day conference with lunch and dinner and many interesting presentations. There was no cost to attend and it was easily the biggest banking meeting in the state.

In the really early years, it was hosted at the Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, but in more recent history, it took place in downtown Minneapolis. Many community bankers from around the region would come in for the day with spouses, many of whom used the time to do some holiday shopping.

The last conference, which ran for 36 years, was conducted in 2000 at the Minneapolis Marriot City Center Hotel.  By then, Norwest had merged with Wells Fargo. I covered those meetings in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. I particularly remember the presentations by Dr. Sung Won Sohn, the bank’s famous economist. “The economy is like an aircraft carrier; it takes a long time to turn it around,” I remember him saying on more than one occasion. He would often end his presentation by consulting the Chinese calendar which would name the coming year for an animal. I always found him to be one of the most entertaining economists to listen to.

Just for fun, I went back to reread our coverage of the 2000 meeting. It featured Ruchi Maden, an analyst for Salomon Smith Barney, who warned that many investment grade companies were experiencing financial trouble, mentioning specifically Chrysler. “Corporate bond default rates are expected to grow dramatically, and we expect credit problems to follow,” she said at the time. Eight years later, she appears to be right on the mark!

Bob Strickland, who was senior vice president for investor relations at the time, moderated a panel featuring Maden and Ben Crabtree, who worked at Dain Rauscher then. Collectively, for the industry they predicted: continuing consolidation, growing importance of the internet, and a softening economy.

I have very good memories from those conferences.