Over the course of his 28 years at Union Bank in Morrisville, Ken Gibbons helped hundreds of small businesses get started, expand and weather nasty economic conditions. He also lobbied hard in support of the US Small Business Administration, helping ensure that its Vermont office would remain viable as Congress moved to cut the SBA's budget.
Now, the Vermont SBA is honoring Gibbons for what he has done in its behalf as well as in the interests of small businesses and community banking in the state. Gibbons will be given the Vermont SBA's first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award at a June 16 ceremony at Shelburne Farms.
He stepped down as Union Bank's president in April and plans to retire as its CEO next May, although Gibbons, 64, intends to remain involved with the bank as chairman of the board of its holding company Union Bankshares (NASDAQ: UNB). He has been succeeded as Union's president by David Silverman, the bank's former vice president who will also be taking over as CEO.
Whenever the SBA was facing “major issues due to a lack of money, Ken would be a prime example of someone who would contact congressional offices and anybody else he could to help us keep going,” says Bernie Villemaire, lender relations specialist for the administration's Vermont district. “He's been a good friend to us for a long time.”
For his part, Gibbons describes the SBA as “extremely important to small businesses and community banks.” He acknowledges that he “made some noise” on occasions when the federal lender was threatened by budget reductions. “I guess I was heard a little bit,” Gibbons adds.
“In tough times,” he notes, “SBA loan guarantees allow us to take risks we otherwise could not take.” Gibbons points in particular to a lending program launched during the recent recession to help small businesses remain in operation. Known as America's Recovery Capital, the ARC initiative enabled banks to make deferred loans of up to $35,000 to prevent struggling small enterprises from going under.
Although his experiences at Union Bank have been largely positive and satisfying, Gibbons says he leaves with a certain trepidation due to the tough new regulations being imposed on community banks as a response to the financial mayhem on the part of Wall Street banks that left the US economy in tatters.
“The regulatory environment has swung way too far,” Gibbons complains. “Community banks didn't create the problems” addressed in the Dodd-Frank legislative package of reforms, he says. Local banks, like Union, are supposed to be exempted from some of the stringent paperwork requirements laid down by Dodd-Frank, Gibbons adds, “but we're not seeing that happening.”
Still, he plans to enjoy his retirement. Gibbons says he'll be able to spend more time boating on Lake Champlain with his wife, Janet, while continuing to work with a number of nonprofit groups in the Morrisville area.
Gibbons has been in banking ever since graduating from high school in Duxbury, MA, in 1965. He moved to Vermont a decade later, taking a position with a small bank in Johnson, where he remained until coming to work for Union in 1984.
Morrisville hasn't changed much, physically, in the years since then, Gibbons says. But he notes that it has seen a number of small local businesses take root and grow — including Concept 2, the maker of rowing machines; Butternut Farm, a maple syrup producer; Hearthstone, which makes wood and gas-fired stoves for the home; and, most recently, Rock Art, a craft brewer that's in the process of expanding.
Many such small businesses in Lamoille County have succeeded due, in part, to the help Gibbons' bank provided. # # #
-- Article by Kevin Kelley for Vermont Business Magaine
