- March 28, 2024
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When Manatee County banker Steve Jonsson spoke to a Wall Street Journal reporter in September 2010, he used words like “marked man, depressing and scarlet letter” to describe his life.
Jonsson referred to how he was doing in the 11 months after regulators shuttered the bank he co-founded and oversaw for a decade, Bradenton-based Flagship National Bank. The Journal story, published Sept. 27, 2010, was part of a series on people in the financial industry nationwide who struggled to find work in the recession.
But Jonsson has now started to write a new story, one with a happier ending: The longtime banker, who ran Bradenton-based Liberty National Bank prior to Flagship, recently joined the business and real estate banking team at Insignia Bank. The hire, which reunites Jonsson with friend and tennis partner Charlie Brown, Sarasota-based Insignia chairman and CEO, ends a three-year period where Jonsson was out of banking.
“We called people in Bradenton about Steve, and we kept hearing he was 'Mr. Manatee,” Brown tells Coffee Talk. “He's having a ball here. He's not dealing with administrative things.”
Jonsson referred all questions to Brown, who says Jonsson has already begun to build a solid loan portfolio at Insignia. Jonsson spent most of his post-Flagship days working in real estate and business consulting.
Brown stayed in touch with Jonsson for the past three years. The pair talked occasionally about working together at Insignia, a 6-year-old bank with $147.8 million in assets, during breaks from tennis matches. Brown approached Jonsson about a job, out of the bank's Fruitville/Cattlemen Road office, this past summer. Says Brown: “We are two friends finally working together.”