News & Events

Group seeks to launch start-up bank

Ex-Marine Bank CEO Kolton plans to head City of Pewaukee firm

Journal Sentinal
by Paul Gores
pgores@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 22, 2004

A group of business professionals plans to raise at least $15 million to start a new bank in the City of Pewaukee.

Generations Bank will be headed by Gregory P. Kolton, who was president and chief executive of Pewaukee-based Marine Bank from 2000 until this year.

Kolton and a team of three other founders have applied to state regulators for a charter for the bank, which will engage in business lending in the area.

Generations Bank would be the first start-up bank in Wisconsin in more than a year. Kolton and other organizers of the bank could not be reached for comment Monday about plans for the bank. But their application to the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions says the bank plans to locate in a building to be constructed near the intersection of Capitol Drive and Highway J.

The minimum $15 million the founders plan to raise to start the bank is more than double the amount normally required by state banking regulators for new financial institutions. New banks must put up in equity capital to establish strength and serve as a cushion against possible operating losses.

The bank will be owned by a holding company called Generations Bancorp Inc.

Jon C. Bruss, chief executive of Fortress Partners Capital Management Inc. in Hartland, which follows banking firms, said he believes the bank's niche will be lending to small- and medium-size businesses.

Kolton is chairman of the Wisconsin Business Development Finance Corp., a Madison-based non-profit organization created in 1981 to help businesses find capital for their companies, and in turn, create jobs and promote community development.

In addition to Kolton, others listed by regulators as applicants for the bank's charter include: Kolton's wife, Heidi Kolton, a former vice president at Metavante Corp., who will be chief operating officer at Generations Bank; real estate developer Bruce D. Neviaser of Madison; and masonry contractor James R. Marriott of Hartland.

Generations Bank would be the first entirely new bank to open in Wisconsin since last year, when Fox River State bank was started in Burlington by former employees of Bank One.

From the Nov. 23, 2004, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel