When Wainwright Bank announced it was being bought out by Eastern Bank last month, the news made waves partly because of the high price of the deal – $163 million, more than two times book value – but because Wainwright had an unusual brand. It is seen as a so-called activist bank, lending to causes including housing for AIDS sufferers and building strong ties within the gay and lesbian community. Jan Miller, CEO, expects that although the Wainwright name will largely disappear, new owner Eastern Bank will carry on the Wainwright’s social justice ideals.

Jan A. Miller

Title: President and CEO, Wainwright Bank; Boston

Age: 59

Experience: 39 years

So why sell now?

The bank is publicly traded, but it’s controlled by the two co-founders of the bank who are the current co-chairmen, Bob Glassman and John Plukas. They have 65 percent or so of the voting stock. So while we have public shareholders as well, there’s fairly tight control among the co-chairmen and members of the board. [They looked] at two things … one thing for certain that is going to happen this year is the capital gains tax is going to go up. So, given the fact that they’ve got a fairly significant amount of their net worth tied up in this stock, it’s not a stock that you could sell piecemeal in the market because we just don’t have a lot of activity out there.

[Second], when we did our budget early in the year, it looked like we were going to have a really good year. We have good earnings, we have a good credit portfolio and it’s sort of maybe the perfect storm… We’ve been working for years with our investment banker, Sandler O’Neill + Partners, and they came in and did a presentation for the board on what the options might be. And we looked at our franchise and we’re looking at the bank, and we’ve got this unique part of our business, our unique branding, that is different out there, that we think has value: 50 percent of our commercial portfolio is either in nonprofit or community development, so it’s a big chunk of what we do. And we have a 12-branch franchise that is primarily Boston and Cambridge-based. That’s all these things that are attractive to folks, so we said, ‘OK.’

The board approved Sandler to go out and do a little exploring and found out that there were a number of banks that were interested in us.

And we looked at potential partners out there, with Eastern paying a very attractive price for our stock, that’s attractive for our shareholders. To get two times book [value], in this kind of environment, was really phenomenal. You haven’t seen a cash deal at two times book, or twice what the stock was selling for the previous day, in probably three or four years around the country. I don’t know what the last deal was at this kind of price.

What created such a good deal for you?

It turned out that they weren’t the only ones interested in us, so it turned out we were attractive. And I think the franchise is good for Eastern in particular. If you look at Eastern – we should have figured this out a long time ago but we really didn’t – is they’ve got North Shore, they’ve got South Shore, they’ve got the Cape – but they’ve got this real gap right there in the middle. They’re headquartered right down the street from us, but they have hardly any branches here.

You’re known as a sort of do-gooder bank. How’d that get started?

Well, one of the cofounders, the co-chairman Bob Glassman, has strong personal beliefs about social justice. And the bank gave him a platform off which he could push forward his social agenda. And he’s very good at it.

You’ve said before that you came in with a very business-oriented mindset and only later fell in love with the social justice concept. How did that come about?

When I joined in 1994, I came here as executive vice president and senior loan officer, and I came really because they had a lot of loan problems. And I felt my particular skill set matched what they needed. At the time the bank was $300 million and shrinking.

One of the first new projects I went out on with Pam Feingold, who runs our community development and nonprofit lending group, was a project out on Huntington Ave. near Northeastern [University]. It was being converted to this facility that housed homeless, some folks with mental illness, some folks with AIDS-related issues. So I’m walking through this, it was gutted at the time, but Pam and the developers were describing this facility and it was just contagious – you couldn’t help but get excited about all the new things that were going got happen once this got done. So I was sort of hooked.

And my job over the years is to meet the social agenda and the business agenda, to make sure there’s never a gap there, that they all work together. Because one doesn’t work without the other. And we’ve been able to balance that pretty well over the years.

Top Five Recent Awards for Wainwright Bank: 

• US Treasury Department CDFI Fund: 2009 Bank Enterprise Award
• Cambridge Chamber of Commerce: Corporate Citizen of the Year
• City of Boston: St. Mark’s Area Main Street Business of the Year 2009
• AIDs Action Committee of Massachusetts: Commitment to Action Award
• Sustainable Business Network of Greater Boston: Sustainable Business Leader Award