Commerce Capital names Florida wealth-biz head

FWR Staff

27 March 2006

Former B of A exec Jean-Marie Baker joins ambitious regional. Former Bank of America regional director Jean-Marie Baker has joined Commerce Capital Markets as head of its brokerage and wealth-management business in Florida. In her new role, Baker will manage the integration of CCM’s retail brokerage and wealth-management services with Commerce Bank's banking products and services.

“Jane-Marie's extensive experience, excellent track record, and intimate knowledge of the Florida market make her the idea person to lead our expansion in Commerce Bank's newest region,” says Stan Gregor, CCM’s president and CEO. He also describes the hire as part of “accelerated build-out of Commerce's wealth management team.”

Similar mandate

This won’t be the first time that Baker has helped lay the groundwork for a wealth manager’s push into a new region. As Florida market president for Fleet Boston, she was in charge of integrating consumer and business banking with brokerage and wealth management services, a mandate that looks strikingly similar to the role set out for her with Commerce.

Baker came to Fleet – which Bank of America acquired in 2004 – from Charles Schwab, where she was a Florida-based regional director who “doubled the company's retail presence and tripled revenue” in the state, according to Commerce Bank.

CCM and Commerce Bank are part of Commerce Bancorp , a Cherry Hill, N.J.-based holding company.

Commerce Bank has seven branches – or “stores,” as the company likes to call them – in Florida, with 10 to 15 new ones scheduled to open before 2007. Long-term, the bank envisions more than 150 branches in southeastern Florida.

Florida aside, Commerce Bank has about 380 branches in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. –FWR