Fighting the Fed

Charlie Conoley never wanted to be a banker, much less start his own bank.

But the high unemployment days of the early 1980s pushed the then-engineer graduate into the industry. And an offhand comment at a party in 1998 led to a meeting with a consultant who helped bankers start their own banks.

Now, more than a decade into founding Bradenton-based Horizon Bancorp Inc., Conoley is doing something else he never thought he would do: Fight federal regulators in an all-out battle for bank survival.