Click here for Part I & Part III

Continuing a nearly 200-year history of service for customers and communities

Rodger Levenson is CEO at WSFS Bank. As the oldest locally-managed bank in the Delaware Valley, WSFS carries forward a 180-year-plus legacy of outstanding financial services for its community. The bank offers individuals and businesses access to commercial banking, cash management, retail banking, trust and wealth management, and more. Earlier this year, WSFS acquired Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. and its primary subsidiary, Beneficial Bank, further growing its regional footprint. The newly combined bank will be relaunching its brand and branches later this month.

EDWIN WARFIELD: Tell us about becoming CEO.

RODGER LEVENSON: Five years ago, Mark [Turner, former WSFS CEO] came to me and said, “I have a plan. I live by deadlines and I live by plans and my plan is I would like to retire as CEO in five years.” This is 2013. He said, “Subject to it working with the board and going through that whole process, my goal would be to retire on December 31, 2018 as President and CEO. I don’t know what that means for you, but I think it could be an opportunity. We’re going to work over the next five years obviously on a transition plan.” After getting my sea legs—because Mark is younger than me and I came to WSFS figuring I’m going to work with this guy for my entire career, and having been thrown that curveball—after a couple of years of that settling in, Mark came back and said, “I think you have the potential, but there are some things you need to work on. Let’s set about a development plan and give you some exposure to other parts of the bank that potentially put you in the position that when the board gets ready to appoint the next CEO that you could be a very viable candidate, and the internal candidate.”

I was the only internal candidate who had been identified by Mark in the board. That led to a number of course work, self-evaluations, working with a coach, a number of other things. We went forward with that plan. It’s been extremely, extremely exciting to have the opportunity, being a long-time banker in this market, to be sitting here today as the President and CEO of by far the largest locally headquartered community bank in the Delaware Valley.

Q. Let’s talk about the recent acquisition. How did the opportunity to acquire Beneficial come about?

A. Technology is rapidly changing how our customers want to interact with us and expect to interact with us. How does WSFS deal with this significant long-term investment we’ve made in physical delivery—branches, for the most part—and start to shift some of that investment towards digital delivery? Our customers tell us—particularly our retail customers, but even our commercial customers say—it is important in selecting their bank to know and see physical locations; they just don’t use them as much as they used to use them because basically all the transaction work that used to get done in the branch you can do now over your phone, or on your desktop, or some other means. We were facing those two big questions. As we talked more and more about it we said we need to do something significant to fund this investment we needed to make in technology and we needed to find the next opportunity for growth.

While going through that process, beneficial happened to be going through the exact same process. Mark, my predecessor, regularly met—as I do now with—other local bank CEOs just to compare notes. He had one of those meetings with Jerry Cuddy, the CEO of Beneficial, a little over a year ago. They started swapping notes and it became, I think, pretty obvious to both of them that we were both dealing with similar challenges. We said, “boy, wouldn’t this be great if we could come together and create a large, locally headquartered community bank.”

We thought they would want to take the approach that this would be more like a merger of equals. We just have a philosophy that there is no such thing really as a merger of equals. You need one team in charge, you need one brand, you need one board. And so we said, “sounds great, but if we’re going to do this it has to be an acquisition.” Long story short: after a couple of interactions with Beneficial and their board, they came back to us and they said, “We understand, and we see the power of this combination. We’d really like to engage in a process with you.” We signed a letter of intent. We entered into what became a 70-day exclusivity period where we sat in either the hotel DuPont or the Ritz with our teams for many, many long days evaluating and validating all of the modeling and how we were going to put the two companies together. It was a very healthy process. It gave us a lot of confidence that this merger which was much bigger than anything that we had done previously. We had done all of the right things we needed to do in terms of not only due diligence but validating, line by line, all of the financials, all of the strategic decisions we were making. We announced the deal on August 8th of last year.

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ABOUT NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NKF's 15,000 professionals operate from more than 400 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

With roots dating back to 1929, NKF's strong foundation makes it one of the most trusted names in commercial real estate. NKF's full-service platform comprises BGC's real estate services segment, offering commercial real estate tenants, landlords, investors and developers a wide range of services including leasing; capital markets services, including investment sales, debt placement, appraisal, and valuation services; commercial mortgage brokerage services; as well as corporate advisory services, consulting, project and development management, and property and corporate facilities management services. For further information, visit www.ngkf.com.

NKF is a part of BGC Partners, Inc., a leading global brokerage company servicing the financial and real estate markets. BGC's common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol (NASDAQ: BGCP). BGC also has an outstanding bond issuance of Senior Notes due June 15, 2042, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol (NYSE: BGCA). BGC Partners is led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer  Howard W. Lutnick. For more information, please visit www.bgcpartners.com.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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