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This article discusses new career plans of Raymond Dempsey, chairman and president of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Fidelity Bank NA. After a five-year miracle-working tour in the bank, Dempsey is now ready to try his technique on a larger scale as new chairman and chief executive officer of European American Bancorp. (EAB). When Dempsey joined Fidelcor, holding company for Fidelity Bank, in 1978, the bank was operating at a loss, and was trying to compete with international money, center banks. Dempsey refocused its lending to regional firms in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Dempsey faces a challenge at EAB, whose earnings dropped 37% in 1983, to $19.2 million. EAB has averaged only an 8.9% return on equity the past four years, and last year earned a paltry 0.22% on its $8.7 billion in assets. Dempsey predicts that in five years he will have EAB among the profit-ability leaders of the New York State's banks. |
