Tucker bolts from FirstBank to lead start-up

Founders' surnames include Bottorff, Frist and Turner

Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

Claire Tucker

Jim Ayers is taking the news in stride. The entrepreneur and philanthropist shares a Titans' suite with former First American CEO Denny Bottorff, sits on the board of Bottorff's Council Ventures LP, and had dinner with him just a few days ago. The fact that Bottorff is among the organizers of a new bank that has just hired away the local president of Ayers' FirstBank is no big deal.

"I'm past the age where I take this stuff personally," Ayers said today, after it was announced that Claire Tucker will be president and CEO of the as-yet-unnamed institution. Other founders include:

• Greg Daily, CEO of iPayment, Inc.
  
• Julie Frist, wife of HCA heir Tommy Frist III
• Jay Turner, a partner in Marketstreet Enterprises and a member of the founding family of Dollar General Corp., and
  
• Toby S. Wilt, a Nashville investor

The bank also announced three staff hires. FirstBank veteran Tip Evans will be chief operating officer, and bankers Jan Holler (also from FirstBank) and Jane Edwards will be coming on board as well.

Plans call for the bank to open within nine months to a year. The organizers have set out to raise some $80 million in initial capital, mainly from around Nashville. It will join the burgeoning ranks of banks headquartered locally or within Tennessee — including FirstBank — that target middle-market business, commercial and residential real estate and private banking.

Up until now, the upstart banks have feasted primarily at the expense of the large regional and national institutions that bought into the Nashville market in the 1980s and 1990s. By deposit share and other indicators, the locals have cumulatively taken a significant amount of business away from the big banks. They have also raided their larger competitors frequently for key staff. In that context, Tucker's move is out of the ordinary: One upstart is raiding another.

Tucker had been with FirstBank, a $1.7 billion community bank headquartered in Lexington, Tenn., ever since it entered the Nashville market in 2000. In addition to serving as local president, she held the title of senior vice president of metropolitan markets with the parent bank. Before joining FirstBank, Tucker had a 25-year career with First American, rising to the presidency of its corporate bank under Bottorff's leadership before AmSouth purchased the bank in 1999. She serves as secretary/treasurer of the Tennessee Lottery's board, which Bottorff chairs.

"We hated to see her go," Ayers said of Tucker's departure, "but we understand people wanting to move up. A lot of bankers want to be CEOs. You can't hold that against them." Ayers said FirstBank is considering "two or three" internal candidates to take over its Nashville operations.