Hartford Business Journal

4 Hartford Business Journal • November 30, 2015 www.HartfordBusiness.com w w w. H a r t f o r d B u s i n e s s . c o m (860) 236-9998 E D I T O R I A L Greg Bordonaro Editor, ext. 139 gbordonaro@HartfordBusiness.com Gregory Seay News Editor, ext. 144 gseay@HartfordBusiness.com Matt Pilon News Editor, ext. 143 mpilon@HartfordBusiness.com John Stearns Staff Writer, ext. 145 jstearns@HartfordBusiness.com Keith Griffin Digital Reporter Stephanie Meagher Research Director Heide Martin Research Assistant B U S I N E S S Joe Zwiebel President and Publisher, ext. 132 jzwiebel@HartfordBusiness.com Donna Collins Associate Publisher, ext. 121 dcollins@HartfordBusiness.com Jessica Baker Office Manager, ext. 122 jbaker@HartfordBusiness.com Kristine Donahue Administrative Coordinator, Ext. 137 kdonahue@hartfordbusiness.com Amy Orsini Events Manager, ext. 134 aorsini@HartfordBusiness.com Christian J. Renstrom Advertising Director, ext. 126 crenstrom@HartfordBusiness.com David Hartley Sr. Accounts Manager, ext. 130 dhartley@HartfordBusiness.com William C. 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Advertising: For advertising information, please call (860) 236-9998. Please address all correspondence to: Hartford Business Journal, 15 Lewis Street, Suite 200, Hart ford CT 06103. News Department: If you have a news item: Call us at (860) 236-9998, fax us at (860) 570-2493, or e-mail us at editorial@HartfordBusiness.com Hartford Business Journal accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or materials and in general does not return them to the sender. Hartford Business Journal (ISSN 1083-5245) is published weekly, 53 x per year including three special issues — one in September, one in November and one in December — by New England Business Media LLC, 15 Lewis Street, Suite 200, Hartford CT 06103. Periodicals postage paid at Hartford, CT. Tel: (860) 236-9998 • Fax (860) 570-2493 Copyright 2015. All rights reserved. Postmaster: Please send address changes to: Hartford Business Journal P.O. 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ALS_Franchise_ad_V1.qxd:Layout 1 9/9/15 3:37 PM Page 1 law degree in New York City. But banking was never far from his mind. So after working at a pair of New York City law firms with clients on financial and other busi- ness matters, Ciulla returned to banking full- time in 1997, with Bank of New York. Seven years later, he joined Webster's commercial-loan unit. Smith, the $24 billion-asset Waterbury bank's second-generation leader, says Ciulla proved an asset right away. Ciulla works out of Webster's Waterbury headquarters and Stamford regional office, near his Westches- ter County, N.Y., home. "He brought an extraordinary intellect,'' Smith said of Ciulla. "A great background in finance. He's a lawyer. He's got an MBA. He brought a perspective on commercial bank- ing that we may not have had before.'' Webster connections Ciulla said it was Savage, Jerry Plush's successor as Webster's president in 2014, who recruited him back to Connecticut, to work there. Savage had devoted much of his banking career doing "specialized lending,'' expertise Ciulla says he's tried to leverage more of within Webster. "John has all the intellect and [energy quo- tient] you'd expect but most importantly he checks his ego at the door and, most impres- sively, he does the right thing always,'' Savage said via email. "He is the real deal. As bank- ers we must first judge a borrower's character and capacity. John has the smarts and per- ceptual abilities to do both." For instance, Ciulla launched several indus- try specialty groups, such as a media/telecom- munications unit, which Webster commercial bankers mine for customer transaction and loan business. "It's been a differentiator for us,'' Ciulla said. "We were a thrift initially. In the last 10 to 12 years, we've evolved the bank into a full-service regional commercial bank. We think more like a large commercial bank than we have previously.'' Webster has the footprint to prove it. Starting with its expansion into the Boston commercial market in 2009, first with a com- mercial loan office, Webster later moved into Westchester County, N.Y., before establishing its New York City beachhead. But it was in 2008, with the first signs of a mounting crisis in the securitized home- mortgage sector, as well as cracks in the U.S. economy, that Ciulla was named Web- ster's chief credit-risk officer. That put him in charge of, among other things, ensuring Web- ster didn't place too many bad-credit bets. On his watch, Webster undertook an exten- sive review of its credit policies, revising and updating as necessary, Ciulla said. The bank also implemented a new credit-management information system, to more timely and effi- ciently monitor its credit risks. Finally, Webster took a closer look at all of its lines of business and exited some, like aircraft financing, he said. Like some other U.S. lenders blindsided by the near-global financial meltdown that for- mally signaled the onset of the Great Reces- sion, Webster was forced to raise new capital. That included $115 million in fresh equity sold to Wall Street to go with $400 million borrowed from the U.S. Treasury under its Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Webster has since repaid its TARP borrow- ing; investor Warburg Pincus reaped dividends, cashing in on stock warrants whose value climbed as the bank and the economy recovered. Both the financial upheaval and recession still echo with Ciulla. "It changed the regulatory landscape and made it more difficult to operate,'' he said. "If anything, it validated how Webster, in good times and bad, stayed with its customers. We helped stabilize the economies in the markets where we operated, and certainly our customers, by pro- viding them with liquidity and products.'' After helping stabilize Webster's balance sheet and recasting its lending model as cred- it-risk chief, Ciulla moved back to the lending side, where he had a hand in again expanding its footprint, this time into Manhattan, Phila- delphia and Washington D.C. "John has a good balance between having the technical knowledge of the business and having a very good personality,'' said Fitzgib- bon, the Sandler O'Neill analyst. Away from Webster, Ciulla is involved in a host of community and family activities in Larchmont, N.Y. The North Haven native coaches his seventh-grade son's travel basket- ball team — a sport Ciulla knows well. Mar- ried, Ciulla also has a daughter in ninth grade. At 6 feet 4 inches, he was a three-year start- ing shooting guard at Williams College, and was inducted in 2013 into North Haven High's Sports Hall of Fame for his athletic prowess. The team aspects of sports, too, have pro- propelled his growth as a banker, Ciulla said. "In any sports activity,'' he said, "there is the idea of teamwork. Learning how to deal with adversity. Dedication. Hard work. Win- ning gracefully. Losing gracefully. All these teach you how to comport yourself.'' n

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