Prominent local banker to head up Sarasota expansion

SARASOTA — Former LandMark Bank CEO Tom Quale has been appointed Sarasota Market president for Bay Cities Bank. The move came as Bay Cities announced plans for a Sarasota expansion.

Quale, a fixture in Sarasota banking, led LandMark Bank for a decade before it was closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in July 2011. Since then, Quale has served as Sarasota Market president for Orlando-based Seaside Bank & Trust.

Tampa-based Bay Cities Bank plans to open a loan production office in downtown Sarasota within the next several weeks. The bank says it is looking for a banking location in the downtown Sarasota area and expects to open a full-service banking location as the bank grows its local client base.

“We have looked south to expand into the Sarasota market for quite some time and determined the need for a market president well known in the area and deeply rooted in the community to make this effort successful,” Gregory Bryant, president and CEO of Bay Cities Bank, says in a news release. “The addition of Tom Quale to our banking team gave us this key component for initiating this expansion. We are a community bank and we believe a community banking void exists in the Sarasota area with only a handful of community banks serving this vibrant market.”

As of June 30, Bay Cities had of $501.2 million in total assets.