The senior management ranks at First Maryland Bancorp continued to thin as four more senior vice presidents left this month, further dampening the morale of veterans at the parent of Maryland's second-largest bank.
The news of the four departures follows the loss of four other senior vice presidents in September, only one of whom left because of a new job. The latest cuts include the company's general counsel and corporate secretary, Gary W. Sutton. Communications chief Ronald C. McGuirk replaces Mr. Sutton as secretary, but spokeswoman Carol Dunsworth said the general counsel's job has not yet been filled.
The high-level departures and an influx of former Maryland National Bank employees have dampened the mood among First Maryland veterans, according to employees and a memo written by human resources director Andrew D. Hiduke.
"A significant number of MNC/NationsBank employees have entered the organization during the last 60 days," Mr. Hiduke wrote to Chief Executive Officer Frank P. Bramble Sr. in an Oct. 21 memo. "This is causing significant morale problems."
Mr. Bramble joined the company in April, four months after leaving NationsBank Corp. He had helped stage a rescue effort at MNC Financial Inc. that ended when NationsBank acquired the company in 1993.
At First Maryland, parent of the First National Bank of Maryland, Mr. Bramble has brought several executive-level colleagues from MNC on board. The company has hired aggressively in recent months. Owned by Allied Irish Banks Plc, of Dublin, First Maryland had $9.2 billion in assets at the end of September and more than 160 branches.
Mr. Hiduke's memo notes that 51 new positions were added in the late summer and early fall, and that 81 were authorized for the last three months of 1994. An additional 60 positions are authorized for 1995, he wrote.
Not all of those people have come from MNC, but enough have arrived to give rise to the "feeling that we have been acquired by the MNC management team," Mr. Hiduke wrote. Adding to the morale problems are perceptions that seniority and experience at First Maryland are no longer valued, and that Mr. Bramble has failed to communicate the company's strategies, as well as his recent decision to cancel a Total Quality program, according to Mr. Hiduke's memo and others.
In his own memo, written in October, Mr. Bramble essentially declared victory and retreated from the quality program, which was instituted in the late '80s to enhance customer service at First National Bank. "Clearly where quality was once an aspiration, it is now the standard," he wrote. He encouraged employees to give up wearing their "quality" lapel pins.
Neither Mr. Hiduke nor Mr. Bramble were available for comment yesterday. Ms. Dunsworth said she would have no comment on those issues, or the executive departures.
Mr. Hiduke's memo mentioned the program cancellation as a factor contributing to "the perception that we will be moving away from our commitment to quality customer service."
(At a goodbye party for one of the senior vice presidents recently, a brass clock was presented as a gift, which prompted one person to shout, "We made it out of melted-down quality pins," according to an executive who was there.)
Other senior vice presidents to leave the company include William D. Naughton, who headed retail banking in Montgomery County; William A. Quade Jr., head of commercial lending at York Bank & Trust in Pennsylvania; and Alan N. Siegfried, in charge of corporate auditing.
As previously reported, senior vice presidents who left in September included Donald E. Sheeler, who was president of First Maryland Brokerage Corp.; Richard F. Barnard, who headed the bank's branch system; and William P. Young, who was in charge of commercial banking in the Washington area, and left for a job with Mercantile Bankshares Corp. Also, John E. Shultz Sr., who ran branch administration, was asked to leave in September.
At the same time, more former Maryland National bankers are arriving each month, according to executives and internal memos. Five were hired in December alone, including a senior vice president.
Mr. Shultz, a 15-year veteran at First Maryland, attributed his departure to "a restructuring -- that's basically what it is."
Quade ended 31 years at First Maryland this month. "I had a wonderful career at a very wonderful bank, such as it was," he said. After a three-year stint managing the consolidation of York bTC Bank into First Maryland and running commercial lending there, the company offered him a position "which I decided was not suitable for me and my career." Mr. Quade said he expects to have a new job in Baltimore soon.
Mr. Sutton, Mr. Naughton and Mr. Siegfried could not be reached for comment yesterday.