After a 38-year career, Glenn Leveridge, president of Chase of Lexington, will be retiring from the bank this spring, and Linda Rumpke, currently managing director of JPMorgan Private Client Services, will take the helm.
“Thirty-eight years is a long time,” said Leveridge, after his retirement plans were officially announced on March 13. “I just saw a culmination of this career from 1970 to 2008 and just thought this timing and this window would provide me an opportunity to complete a lot of the transitions that I’ve done.”
Leveridge, who is 59, has led the local bank, formerly the Bank of Lexington, Liberty National and Bank One, through three major bank mergers over a span of 15 years. He has also served as executive in charge of wealth management and retail over the years, among other positions, and he has held positions on numerous local boards, including Commerce Lexington, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, and the Urban League. Under Leveridge’s leadership, Chase employees have weathered numerous trials and tribulations, ranging from the succession of mergers to the tragic parking garage accident that killed employee Stephanie Hufnagel in 2006. Those experiences have strengthened the bonds of trust among the Chase team, Leveridge said, and he has enjoyed a steady flow of support and encouragement from the bank’s staff following his retirement announcement.
“I really have a very good relationship with our entire employee base,” Leveridge said.
Among Leveridge’s proudest accomplishments during his 38 years have been his ability to help employees develop and accomplish their own career aspirations as well as his opportunities to lead through change.
“There are very few bank presidents that have transitioned and stayed in place from a Bank of Lexington to a Liberty National to a Bank One to a Chase,” Leveridge said. “In all fairness, and without patting myself on the back, that typically doesn’t happen.”
Leveridge also takes pride in the opportunity he’s had to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Cleveland, where he is completing his second three-year term.
Leveridge plans to step back and take a few months to consider his options, but he’s not ruling out future opportunities in a variety of fields, ranging from banking to health care to education to nonprofits to entrepreneurship. He does, however, plan to stay in the Lexington area.
“I’m retiring from JPMorgan Chase, but I’m still a young 59,” Leveridge said. “I want to do something, and it might surprise me what I do.”
Leveridge will be staying on at Chase through April 30, the projected target date for the transfer of responsibilities to Rumpke.
Rumpke, who is 50, has worked for Chase and its predecessors for 22 years, and she plans to maintain her current responsibilities as managing director with JPMorgan Private Client Services in addition to her new presidential role.
Like Leveridge, Rumpke has experienced her fair share of bank mergers. She started her banking career in June 1986, the same week Citizen’s Union Bank became Bank One’s first out-of-state acquisition. The bank merged with First Security in 1992 and with Liberty National in 1994, before being acquired by JPMorgan Chase.
“Yes, I’ve been through a lot of mergers, but this has been the best ever,” Rumpke said. “It brought a lot of great people to the organization, so I feel very fortunate to have been through all that.”
And throughout those mergers, Rumpke has also had the opportunity to gain experience in a host of fields within the organization, including wealth management and investment, commercial lending, business banking and community development lending.
“I’ve had the good fortune with this firm to be able to work in a lot of different areas,” Rumpke said. “I think I’ve done almost everything except running the teller line.”
Some of Rumpke’s best preparation for her new responsibilities, she said, has come from her experience with community development lending and community reinvestment while part of Bank One.
“That has truly prepared me to deal with all aspects of the role, because I was part of a lot of grassroots initiatives around affordable housing, around helping people understand the homeowner process, around helping small business owners have access to educational tools to help them build their businesses,” she said.
Rumpke has handled these responsibilities not only locally, but also at the state level, helping her build a network of resources and a more broad-based awareness of the issues, she said, both of which she expects to use in continuing Chase’s involvement in local community development issues.
“You have to be part of the fabric of the community,” Rumpke said. “That’s just who we are, and that, quite frankly, is the most exciting part about this opportunity for me. It’s going to give me more opportunities to be involved, even beyond the boards that I currently sit on.”
Rumpke serves on the local boards of the St. Joseph Hospital Foundation, United Way of the Bluegrass, Lexington Catholic High School and the Destination 2040 Steering Committee. She and her husband, Rob, have two sons, Michael and Marc. Michael is finishing his senior year at University of New Orleans, and Marc is a first grader at Christ the King School.
Last October, Chase announced it would phase out its Lexington loan processing center and move its workload to the company’s Monroe, La., facility, with 430 layoffs expected in Lexington by the summer of 2008. Rumpke said this has given Chase the opportunity to concentrate the bank’s resources on its more directly client-focused services.
“It’s unfortunate, ... but the way we look at it, our front office, our client-facing areas, are actually growing,” Rumpke said. “It’s really a reorganization in the sense of getting the synergies in our back-office operations, and giving us the capital to also add in our client-facing roles, and not just within my group, but across all of our lines of business.”
Rumpke sees opportunities for the bank’s future in leveraging the talents and resources of Chase as a global firm for the benefit of its local clientele.
“We’re able to be a global firm, but still be very local in our delivery, and that makes a big difference,” Rumpke said. “I see us moving even farther away from how our competitors deliver financial services. ... (Our method) is really very solutions-based.”
While the bank will miss Leveridge, Rumpke said that Chase has developed a broad base of experienced local leadership to help in the transition and rely on in the coming years.
“I think it’s all about the people,” Rumpke said. “If you look through our organization locally, we have very tenured individuals. ... Many of them are native Lexingtonians, or have been here since college, and are so actively involved in the community. And that’s where Glenn set the standard for us. He is absolutely so community-based and encouraged an environment of being involved and being a good corporate citizen, and I certainly hope to carry on his legacy in that role.”