Running the bank: after racing to the top, can Kel Landis take RBC Centura cross-country without leaving his hometown in its dust?

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Feature

In 1993, Kel Landis set a goal of running the Boston Marathon. That meant finishing a qualifying marathon in three hours and 15 minutes. Throughout the summer, he ran every day with an eye toward the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., that October. He aimed to finish in three hours flat and claim his ticket to Boston.

He started strong, crossing the midpoint in an hour and 28 minutes. But at about mile 23, his legs started to cramp, forcing him to stop to stretch. Half a mile later, more cramps, more stretching. And then again. He finished in three hours and 19 minutes. "I was so--I don't want to say pissed off--so discouraged, so disappointed, missing the cutoff for Boston by four minutes."

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Runners are advised to wait at least three months between marathons to let joints and muscles heal. But Landis couldn't wait. "I found out there was this marathon three weeks later in Greensboro. So I went to Greensboro, and I ran a 3:07. I just killed it."

Four months later, when he got to Boston, he ran just under 3:30. "That was my celebration. I took time to enjoy that one."

His approach to qualifying for the race was typical, his wife, Belinda, says. "Kel's always living in the next. He can't live in the present because he's always thinking about the next."

That same drive--and impatience--has pushed him to the top of Rocky Mount-based RBC Centura Banks Inc., the U.S. banking subsidiary of Toronto-based Royal Bank of Canada. Because its parent is based outside of North Carolina, RBC Centura isn't eligible for BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA's annual ranking of Tar Heel financial institutions (page 45). But among those with branches in North Carolina, based here or not, it ranks seventh in 2002 revenue.

He started his career with stints at Wachovia and First Union but jumped to a smaller bank in Rocky Mount because he thought he would advance faster. That bank merged with another local one to form Centura Banks in 1990, and when a top job opened up, Landis didn't wait for it to be offered. He asked for it. Success, in other words, has been uncomplicated for Landis. Until lately.

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Landis now has the job he wanted from the time Centura was formed. But with its purchase in 2001 by RBC Financial Group, the holding company for Royal Bank of Canada, the job isn't what it was. He isn't head of a public company and doesn't get courted by Wall Street and investors. He's expected to shuttle to Canada two to three times a month for meetings. Worse still, he has been handed a problem that his drive can do little to solve. He has to show that a bank with national aspirations can remain in a small city in an economically depressed part of this state. He's passionate about improving the plight of his home region--last year he helped start a foundation to foster development there. But as a businessman, he knows his first responsibility is to RBC's shareholders.

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Landis, who will turn 47 in December, is about the last guy you'd expect to be at the forefront of a foreign venture in North Carolina. While many classmates at UNC Chapel Hill went on to careers in Charlotte and New York, he made his in his hometown of Rocky Mount, about an hour east of Raleigh.

When he was growing up there, tobacco was king, and growing and brokering bright leaf was lucrative enough to support two sizable local banks, Peoples and Planters. Howard Kelly Landis Jr.--Big Kel, as he was known around town--was an executive at Peoples. His wife, Corinne, taught school. Big Kel was easygoing and amiable. Corinne was--still...