William A. Donius, Pulaski Financial Corp.'s chief executive and president, has been the face of the St. Louis thrift company for a decade and the architect of its expansion, but on May 1 he will step away from running its daily operations and, as he put it, get to work on his "bucket list."
The bucket list, a term coined last year in a movie by the same name starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, is a list of things to do before, well, kicking the bucket. Mr. Donius, 49, is quite healthy but said building Pulaski from $160 million of assets to $1.2 billion brought "serious distortion" to his personal life.
His to-do list includes hiking all the U.S. national parks and visiting Machu Picchu in Peru.
"The company is on such solid footing that I am able to relinquish the day-to-day job," Mr. Donius said in an interview this week. "No one will ever say they wished they would have worked another 10 years."
Mr. Donius made the surprise announcement Saturday night during a recognition dinner for the company's 350 employees. The news was also released to the public Saturday in conjunction with the company's earnings for its second fiscal quarter, which ended March 31. (Its profit rose 13.4% from a year earlier, to $2.5 million.
"He is leaving the company in pretty good shape," said Daniel Cardenas, director of research at Howe Barnes Hoefer & Arnett Inc. in Chicago. "But I am sure the new management will be looking for things to improve upon."
Mr. Donius will be a consultant and a director of the holding company, as well as the chairman of its Pulaski Bank. He and his family, along with those he describes as closely connected to the family, own roughly a quarter of the company's stock.
"I will be staying with the company indefinitely," Mr. Donius said. He will also continue representing Pulaski in the community and starring in the company's advertisements.
Pulaski Financial has hired Gary W. Douglass as the new president and chief executive. Mr. Douglass most recently served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of CPI Corp., a St. Louis portrait studio. He was also the CFO of the $9 billion-asset Roosevelt Financial Group Inc., which Mercantile Bancorp. (now part of U.S. Bancorp) acquired in 1997.
Like most financial institutions, Pulaski has experienced a slip in asset quality recently. For its second quarter, the company reported a 45.5% increase in its nonperforming assets from Sept. 30. Its provision for loan losses nearly tripled from a year earlier, to $1.7 million.
Mr. Cardenas said that Pulaski is "in the middle of the pack" of Midwestern banking and thrift companies of its asset size when it comes to credit quality, and that he would expect its new management team to "scrub the portfolio" for other troubled loans.
Mr. Donius joined Pulaski Bank in 1992 and took over as the CEO in 1998, succeeding his father, Walter Donius, who succeeded his father-in-law, Michael Burdzy, who founded what was Pulaski Savings and Loan in 1922.
Pulaski converted from a mutual thrift to a mutual holding company in 1994 and became 100% stock-owned in 1998. Since then it has tripled its number of branches, to 12, and according to Mr. Donius, it is now the largest one- to four-family residential lender in the St. Louis market. In 2006 the company set a goal of reaching $1.5 billion of assets by 2010, and Mr. Donius said it would aim to reach $3 billion to $4 billion of assets over the next five years.
He said his father backs his decision to step down. "My parents are pleased, my mother maybe more so than my father," he said. "He was a workaholic, and I have been, as well. After going at a breakneck pace, I am ready for a new chapter."
That chapter will not be all about climbing mountains. Financially "in great shape," Mr. Donius said he would also look to invest in emerging businesses.
"I could continue to do more of the same, but I am principally stepping down because I can," he said.
