Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Spokane-based commercial banking unit currently oversees $4.4 billion in client assets—primarily here and in Boise—and is poised to add more, says senior vice president and senior client manager Dan Evans.

And helping his staff of investors and sales reps complete that goal is a big part of what he’s done in his first year on the job.

Here, Bank of America Merrill Lynch serves middle-market companies with annual revenues of $50 million to $2 billion. Evans is responsible for building relationships with clients and helping them meet their financial goals.

Says Evans, “We provide our clients a variety of solutions, including Treasury, credit, investment banking, risk management, hedging commodities, rates, foreign exchange (the global market where currencies are traded), international banking and wealth management, among others.” Evans says.

The $4.4 billion held in assets is exclusively in the form of loans extended to middle-market companies, Evans says.

Year to date, Bank of America Merrill Lynch has extended $5 million in new loans to commercial businesses primarily in the Boise and Spokane markets, a 10 percent increase from the same time period a year ago, says Anu Ahluwalia, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Manhattan-based senior vice president of media relations of loans in the Spokane and Boise markets.

“My first order of business was to help broaden our coverage within the regional footprint and make sure that we’re calling on companies in our space, which is generally north of $50 million in revenue,” Evans says.

Evans charged his department with reaching out to companies that Bank of America Merrill Lynch hadn’t contacted in a long time or had never reached at all.

“Yes, some previous customers, but honestly, a lot of cold calling,” he says.

“I felt like we were uniquely positioned given the market and the competition with the team that was already here to begin winning new business—and we’ve done so already,” Evans says.

“I feel like we’re at a point right now where we’re focused on a certain number of names and certain geography,” Evans says.

Evans declines to disclose the names of companies targeted by his team, but he says, “I can tell you that I have worked with a handful of publicly traded companies in this market and some very large privately held companies.”

Evans says his focus traditionally has been on targeting companies in the natural resources industries involved in oil, food, timber, and energy.

Prior to moving to Spokane, Evans spent three years in the same capacity at the company’s financial center in Seattle.

His offices here are located on the fifth floor of the Bank of America Financial Center, at 601 W. Riverside.

Evans leads a team of veteran banking professionals in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon. He also oversees the company’s marketing efforts in Alaska.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has 240 employees in its regional global commercial banking department, including Spokane and Boise. Citing company policy, Evans declines to disclose the size of his Spokane staff, though he says the unit is growing.

Of his department both here and regionally, he says, “We don’t get many folks who come right out of school or right out of training programs and start working in the client-facing role. So I have folks in several business channels that are accountable to me and my clients for both service and sales.”

Evans graduated from Washington State University with an undergraduate degree in communications with an emphasis in broadcast journalism. He then enrolled in WSU’s MBA program and earned his master’s in May 2002.

“I’m the first college graduate in my family so there wasn’t a lot of guidance counseling available to me before I went to college,” he says.

“I enjoy being in front of a crowd, writing and public speaking, so that seemed to be sort of a natural convergence of all those skills,” Evans says of his initial desire to be a journalist.

But before completing his undergraduate degree he saw the uncertain future of journalism and decided to pursue a graduate degree in business.

A Washington Mutual Inc. bank branch in Yakima hired Evans in its commercial training program after he completed his master’s degree, he says.

“I was able to begin lending and client facing right away. That was the benefit of being in a small market at a bank that frankly didn’t have much of a commercial banking program,” Evans says.

That job led to an opportunity to take a similar position at a U.S. Bank branch in Spokane in 2004.

“But I had several friends from the commercial training program with B of A who said, ‘This is where you need to come,’’’ Evans says.

His initial contact with a Bank of America recruiter led to series of interviews that resulted in Evans accepting a position as a client manager with Bank of America in Modesto, Calif., in 2005.

“It was a great job frankly because it was an interesting time in banking. You don’t know what you don’t know until you’re faced with what you don’t know,” Evans says.

Evans then accepted his first senior vice president and senior client manager position with Bank of America in its Sacramento office and spent five years there.

He says Bank of America Merrill Lynch has the ability to be a “one-stop shop” for mid-level businesses.

“I want to insure that I provide them the opportunity to be successful by understanding their capital structure, and then providing them with a facility, or facilities, that meets their needs,” Evans says.

“We want to be there to meet all their financial needs, and that might be retirement exchange, foreign exchange, treasury management and derivatives.”

Evans goes on to say, “The nice thing about working for a bank like Bank of America is that there is literally nothing that we can’t provide.”