EVERETT — Coastal Community Bank is taking on two former Frontier Financial executives, including the president who was fired for taking a vacation with his family.
John Dickson, a leader at Frontier for decades, will be assuming the position of “senior relationship manager” at Coastal Community.
He was fired from Everett-based Frontier just weeks before the bank was seized by state regulators and sold to Union Bank of California.
Coastal Community is also hiring Lyle Ryan as a senior relationship manager. Ryan was a formerly Frontier’s executive vice president of private client services.
“John and I wanted to join a stable community bank with a culture of providing outstanding customer service,” Ryan said in a prepared statement Thursday. “Coastal Community Bank, with its strong leadership, vision, and stable financial position, met that criteria.”
Ryan said he and Dickson are looking forward to maintaining relationships they built during their banking careers.
John Dickson, the son of Frontier founder Bob Dickson, was fired from the troubled bank in April. At the time, Frontier was facing a firm directive from regulators to improve its capital standing or face closure.
Pat Fahey, the former CEO of Frontier Bank, asked Dickson to cancel a family vacation in light of the bank’s mounting trouble. He was fired as president of the bank when he refused, and stepped down from its board of directors days later.
In a resignation letter addressed to Fahey, Dickson wrote the dismissal meant he couldn’t continue on with the bank his father helped build.
“My termination followed your improper demand that I refrain from exercising my employment right to earned vacation time for a family vacation during my children’s spring break starting on March 31, 2010,” Dickson wrote. “I had earlier given you timely notification of my vacation schedule.”
Fahey replaced Dickson as CEO in 2008.
Coastal Community isn’t up against the same set of woes that Frontier faced, according to a statement released by the bank Thursday.
The bank’s new accounts have doubled in the last year, something Coastal Community officials said could be the result of a mass exodus of customers from failed banks under new ownership.
“We’re asking these customers to come to us and our staff is opening new relationships daily,” Coastal Community CEO Eric Sprink said.
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