Gerard Nadeau
Title: Executive Vice President, Commercial Loan Division
Age: 55
Experience: 30 years
Banking runs in Gerard Nadeau’s family, so it wasn’t too surprising when both he and his brother wound up in the business. Nadeau recalled graduating from Bentley College and immediately seeking out a bank training program. Since his brother had gone to the other commercial bank in town, long since swallowed up by Fleet, Nadeau headed to Rockland Trust, where he’s spent his entire career. Today, he heads up the bank’s commercial loan division, which drove much of Rockland Trust’s recent second quarter growth.
Q: What have you seen in terms of development outside of Boston?
A: There are a couple different things. You are still seeing the shifting style of residential developments, but also we saw an uptick in medical office space.
The medical industry has shifted from an era when most doctors operated in sole practices in their own building, and then down the street you might have a complementary medical service they would refer you to. Now we’re seeing consolidation in health care, so you’re increasingly seeing buildings built to suit for medical under one roof with multiple disciplines or practices of medicine – often through a group that they’re all members of. So the construction of new or rehabilitated medical facilities has been a trend going on now for the past five years.
On the [commercial and industrial] side, we have seen absorption of warehouse space. The warehouse vacancy rate was quite high for some time, but it’s finally being absorbed. It seems to be being absorbed by smaller distributors that might be serving some local retailers or contractors. What we are not seeing is many warehouses being occupied by companies with a national scale of distribution. I don’t think we are physically situated in the right footprint for that. So you’re seeing a lot of the large warehouse complexes actually being cut up into smaller spaces.
Q: What does all of this tell you about the financial health of the small businesses in your marketplace?
A: I think the financial health of existing small businesses, those that survived the downturn, is greatly improved. What I am a little concerned about is the number of startup small businesses. It’s not anywhere near the pace you’d see in previous recoveries, and it’s much more difficult to start a business today, from a regulatory, permitting and licensing environment.
Secondly, I think we’re in a period of evolution where … the typical businesses people would start have changed. It’s more tech-driven today. Everyone wants to develop their own app. We’ve had great success in building technology companies here because there are so many investors that are willing to help young people. They can go to great business incubators in Boston around the universities, and if they have some great ideas, very quickly they can get professional help and advice about how to start that business.
There are fewer avenues for those who want to start something a little less sexy, that’s not technology, that’s probably never going to be a publicly-traded company, that’s never going to be worth billions of dollars – but yet those are the basic businesses that drove our economy and employed people. I do worry a little bit about that; there really isn’t a great network out there to start some of those more traditional businesses. Where do they go? How do they do it?
Q: Have you been reaching out to that segment at all?
A: We actually work with some local community development corporations, like SEED in Taunton, where we sponsor financial counseling sessions. We would, for example, sponsor a session about how to start a small business, how to finance a small business, how [to go about] staffing a small business.
If you don’t yet own a business, you’re not as likely to reach out to a bank because you think they’re just going to talk about a loan. What we’re trying to do is create an environment where people can come talk to us about their business – whether they should even go into business, let alone borrow the money. It’s part of being an advisor. We find by partnering with these third parties, we can give that advice out in a more comfortable fashion.
I think it’s incumbent on a community bank that’s commercially focused to offer those services in the markets we serve.
Gerard Nadeau’s Top Five Favorite Books:
- “Heart of Darkness,” by Joseph Conrad
- “Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon,” by Michell Pacelle
- “A Man in Full,” by Tom Wolfe
- “The Millionaire Next Door,” by Thomas J. Stanley
- “Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf”
