JOINT ACCOUNT.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: MountainBank, American Community Bank

A tale of two new, rapidly growing banks. Success is the only thing they have in common.

One is trim, natty in his charcoal-gray suit, a salesman full of bluster and backwoods charm. The other tries to dress the part but looks more comfortable in blue blazer, gray slacks and open-collar striped shirt, practically apologizing as he wraps up details before leaving for a long weekend of golf at the beach. He's a banker, too, but cut from different cloth.

They run community banks. Salesman J.W. Davis is president of MountainBank, which opened in 1997 in Henderscnville. Golfer Randy Helton is president of Monroe-based American Community Bank, which opened a year later.

Both came to their jobs fed up after working for the state's biggest banks. For Davis, it was NationsBank (now Bank of America); for Helton, First Union (now Wachovia). Both preach the old gospel of community banking: calling customers by name, giving them time with decision makers, local ownership, flexibility in making loans.

And both their banks are grow ng. On BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA'S annual ranking of the state's banks and thrifts, MounrainBank's revenues of $8.1 million last year advanced it from No. 64 to No. 36. American Community Bank's $5.2 million moved it from 76th to 52nd. They moved the most on this year's list, which includes only independent North Carolina-based banks and thrifts.

MountainBank and American Community may share the same trajectory. But what's striking about them, like the men who run them, are the differences between them. MountainBank concentrates on banking basics: charging more for loans than it pays for deposits and pocketing the difference. American Community Bank wants to be what the state's biggest banks have become: one-stop money stores.

Whichever is right -- and with a year-and-a-half head start, MountainBank's numbers look healthier -- will be better positioned to thrive as the number of community banks in the state shrinks, which experts say will happen over the next decade. Tony Plath, banking professor at UNC Charlotte, predicts the number will drop from 65, just one fewer than a decade ago, to 25.

That has already begun. In May, Hickory-based Catawba Valley Bank announced a merger with Gastonia-based First Gaston Bank. Two months later, Gastonia-based Gaston Federal Bancorp bought Innes Street Financial, holding company for Citizens Bank of Salisbury. MountainBank's acquisition of First Western Bank of Burnsville is slated to close in December.

In the past, community-bank acquisitions typically spawned new community banks. No longer, Plath says. Investors have stopped earning premiums when little banks get bought, and that kills an incentive to form them. Plus, regulatory changes that allow banks, insurance companies, brokerages and other financial-services companies to offer a greater range of bank-like services create more...