CEO quietly withdraws from bank

The CEO of Darien Rowayton Bank Inc. quietly left the company last summer after just a year on the job to rejoin a Virginia-based consultancy he co-founded.

Bert Knotts is back with Richmond, Va.-based Strategic Risk Associates L.L.C., listing his one-year stint with the Darien-based bank on his LinkedIn profile.

At deadline, Darien Rowayton Bank had yet to make public on its own website Knotts”™ departure or the circumstances behind it, with the bank now run by President Robert Kettenmann, who did not immediately respond to a request for information.

The bank hired Knotts in 2010, the year following the imposition of a federal enforcement action that resulted in a “dramatic” decline in lending activity, according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. report on its community reinvestment record recently published online. The FDIC gave the bank a “satisfactory” rating for its record in community lending and other criteria.

Over a one-year period through March 2010, Darien Rowayton Bank”™s loans outstanding dropped 19 percent, with deposits dropping by a similar rate. Since March 2010, however, the bank has increased lending every quarter, and as of September 2011 it had $134 million in net loans outstanding, up from $95 million a year earlier.

Still, the bank lost $1.5 million through the first nine months of 2011, after having lost $3.6 million the year before. Since its 2006 launch, the company has yet to turn a net annual profit, according to FDIC records.

With Knotts”™ arrival in July 2010, Darien Rowayton Bank pledged to increase small business lending, and as of September had done so by more than $1 million. Early last year, the bank arranged a $6.5 million loan for Clearwater Acquisitions L.L.C., which owns the Greenwich property owned by Miller Motor Cars, whose makes include Aston Martin, Bentley and Ferrari.

In 2010, the bank was approved to offer US. Small Business Administration guaranteed loans, allowing it to originate loans that otherwise might not have met the bank”™s underwriting standards. In addition, the bank plans to expand its residential mortgage activity through the activities of wholly owned subsidiary DRB Mortgage Inc.

In the past year, Darien-Rowayton Bank has expanded its workforce by a third to just more than 30 employees.