Robert Daugherty had been offered the top post at California Savings Bank and was house-hunting in San Francisco earlier this year when he got a call about the president and CEO posts at Spokane-based AmericanWest Bancorp.


Soon thereafter, he moved his house search northward.


Daugherty, who started at AmericanWest Sept. 20 as the successor to a retired Wes Colley, didnt come to the Spokane bank with an elaborate game plan. Rather, he came in ready to coach basics.


Its about blocking and tackling, says Daugherty, who has worked in banking for more than 30 years. Its about offering competitive bank prices and supporting the communities you serve. Thats the blocking and tackling of community banking.


Just over two months into the position, Daugherty has plans to increase the size and profitability of AmericanWest, which currently has 44 branches in Washington and North Idaho and assets of $1.1 billion.


Specifically, Daugherty says he wants to improve the banks internal operations and external name recognition, as well as create a more conventionalbut not conservativeloan and credit-underwriting culture. At the same time, he wants to continue to grow AmericanWest through a mix of new branches and acquisitions.


Founded in 1983 as United Security Bancorp., AmericanWest has grown largely through acquisitions of other bank companies. Until merging all its various branches into the AmericanWest fold in 2000, the bank holding company had operated them under their previous namesAmericanWest Bank, United Security Bank, Home Security Bank, and Bank of Pullman.


Creating that unified brand, however, it didnt go far enough in making the company operate as a single organization, Daugherty says.


We have the brand, but the brand has not been developed, he says.


Since arriving at AmericanWest, Daugherty has started to assemble an internal marketing department and a training department, each of which will have a handful of employees. Neither department existed before. The banks corporate offices will move later this month into the new AmericanWest Financial Center, at 41 W. Riverside downtown, from its current quarters at 9506 N. Newport Highway, and the new departments will move into the North Side space thats to be vacated.


Daugherty says, AmericanWest has a history and reputation for accepting higher-than-standard risk loans, and he wants to change the banks lending and credit-underwriting practices.


Some people in this town would say were seen as a lender of last resort, he says. Im going to do what I can to change that.


In the second quarter of this year, AmericanWest wrote off loan losses of between $4 million and $4.5 million from two loans to a contractor that built electrical transmission lines and communications systems. The bank remained profitable that quarter despite the loss, though its net income fell.


AmericanWest also loaned money for development of two Spokane Valley ice-skating arenas within a few miles of each other a few years ago and ended up foreclosing on both facilities. The bank has agreed to sell one of those facilities, and still is marketing the other for sale.


Daugherty says AmericanWest also had been active in lending farther afield than the communities it currently serves, and that in the future, its emphasis will be on lending relationships with individuals and businesses in the communities where it already is doing business.


He says that if a Spokane company had a project in Las Vegas, for example, AmericanWest would be eager to consider financing its project, but itd be much less interested in lending money to a Las Vegas-based company with which it has no other connection than a project loan.


Daugherty, he says that the bank has potential to grow in a number of the markets it already serves.


Weve got tremendous opportunities in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Yakima, Walla Walla, and Lewiston, he says. Im sure Im missing some, but these are real growth areas for the company.


The bank currently is recruiting additional loan officers in each of those markets.


Also, the bank will grow through a mix of opening new branches and acquiring established banks, though AmericanWest doesnt have immediate plans to do either at this stage, Daugherty says. He says he still is assessing the markets that AmericanWest currently serves.


That assessment also could include closing branches, he says, though there arent any immediate plans to do that, either.


In the third quarter of this year, AmericanWest reported net income of $4 million, or 38 cents a diluted share, up from $3.7 million, or 35 cents a diluted share, in the year-earlier period.


As of Sept. 30, the company had $1.1 billion in total assets, up from $994 million a year earlier. Total loans were $952 million, compared with $842 million a year earlier, and total deposits were up $923 million, up from $875 million.


Before Spokane


A Toronto native, Daugherty spent his first 20 years in the banking industry in his hometown before taking a job at a small bank in the Salt Lake City area in the early 1990s. He became president and CEO of that bank, the Draper Bank of Utah, late that decade and served in that capacity for about three years before accepting the top post at the much larger Humboldt Bank, in Northern California, in 2001.


Daugherty says that Humboldt had suffered significant losses as a result of poor performance by noncore business units, such as leasing and merchant bank-card processing.


When he took over at Humboldt, Daugherty says he sold or closed those business units and moved the banks headquarters from the relatively remote Eureka, Calif., south to Roseville, Calif., near Sacramento. The bank had branches throughout California, but sold or closed all of its branches south of Interstate 80, which cuts across California just north of San Francisco and goes through Sacramento, so that it could concentrate on growth in Northern California.


The banks profitability turned on a dime, Daugherty says, and the companys assets grew to $1.5 billion from $1 billion within a couple of years.


Earlier this year, Umpqua Holdings Corp., of Portland, acquired Humboldtthereby giving itself a strong presence in Northern California. Daugherty says he was offered a position as president of Umpquas California division, but decided to pursue unsolicited offers from California Savings and AmericanWest.


Ive been a CEO of a bank for seven years now, Daugherty says. Once you become a CEO, its pretty hard to not continue to be a CEO.