The Gardiner-based Savings Bank of Maine will have two new senior managers, whose investment group injected $60 million into the 32-branch institution that was short on cash.

President Arthur Markos, who started at Savings Bank of Maine in 1981, will retire, and the board of directors will be replaced.

“There’s a good management team, and the bank is really positioned well to have a great future,” Markos said.

John Everets, a longtime Boston financier and former head of the medical finance firm HPSC Inc., will be the bank’s new chairman and chief executive officer.

Willard Soper, former senior vice president of Boston’s Shawmut Bank and former chief executive officer of Florida’s Kislak National Bank, will be the bank’s president.

The cash infusion and ownership change came in response to orders from Savings Bank of Maine’s federal regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, to boost its capital holdings, stop issuing high-risk loans and stop “unsafe or unsound practices.”

Advertisement

A “prompt corrective action” directive issued in March required that the bank boost its cash holdings by Sept. 30 — to 10.76 percent of its assets — or be liquidated or taken over.

The $60 million will help Savings Bank of Maine exceed the capital requirements, Everets said.

Savings Bank of Maine, which incorporated in 1834, defaulted on a multimillion-dollar loan it took out to acquire Rivergreen Bank of Kennebunk in 2008, according to the Office of Thrift Supervision. The $60 million cash infusion will also allow the bank to pay down that loan.

The bank recorded $929.1 million in assets as of March 31, with $65.4 million of that in cash.

 


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.