A New Flag

When PNC Bank executive Joe Meterchick received a Florida promotion call from his bosses a few years ago, he had some good reasons to reject it.

A big one: The banking industry in the Sunshine State was a jumbled cluster of failed banks, institutions under regulatory order and lenders desperate for capital. The shine of the early 2000s boom, when executive banking in Florida was a plum gig, had evaporated.

But Meterchick, a 30-year PNC veteran who at the time headed up the company's corporate banking unit in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, decided to take the job. He had a vacation home in east Manatee County, for one. Plus the idea of building a business almost from scratch appealed to his sense of entrepreneurialism.