Countybank has to be feeling good about its prospects for growth in Greer now that the mayor is on its sales team.
Rick Danner worked at Greer State Bank for 15 of the 17 years that he’s been mayor of the city of just under 30,000 residents between Greenville and Spartanburg.
Recently, however, he took a new job as vice president of business development for Greenwood-based Countybank.
His move came just as the four-branch Greer State Bank got sold to the Charleston-based parent company of CresCom Bank in a stock-and-cash deal valued at about $45 million.
Danner said he changed jobs after talking with his friend and former boss, Ken Harper, who ran Greer State Bank before becoming Countybank’s chief operating officer.
Making the switch was “an opportunity to be a part of a group of folks and a business model that I think was more reflective of what I was used to than what I foresaw was going to be the case at CresCom,” Danner told UBJ.
Founded in 1933 in Greenwood, Countybank has nine office or ATM locations in Greenwood and Greenville counties.
The 63-year-old Danner — originally from Knoxville, Tenn. — married a Greer native after attending Clemson University. He and his wife, Rita, live two blocks from where she spent her childhood in downtown Greer.
Right now, Countybank’s Greer office is located at 103 N. Main St.. Danner is one of three employees working to boost the bank’s business in the city and find a different location for its first branch.
Working with him are two other former employees of Greer State Bank: Lifelong Greer resident Kevin Duncan, who is Countybank’s new Greer city executive, and Melody Owens, whose title is vice president of communications. Owens’ husband, Mark Owens, is president of the Greater Greer Chamber of Commerce.
“We want to see what we can do in the Greer area,” Danner said. “Countybank has a banking model that I think is something that will appeal to the Greer market, particularly to those small- and medium-sized businesses that are used to dealing with somebody that they know and trust.”
