By Elizabeth Cloutman

With many Silicon Valley businesses facing layoffs or even bankruptcy within the past year, as well as a nationwide economic slowdown, it would seem a less than opportune time to open a full-service bank.

Despite the economic climate, Los Altos entrepreneur Allan Kramer, a retired physician, said he and several other former bankers and banking consultants recognized a banking niche that needed to be filled.

“We realized there had been no new bank formation in Silicon Valley in seven years,” Kramer said. “The banks that are here … have been gobbled up by the larger banks … opening up a vacuum (for) a new, independent community-based bank that provides that one-on-one personal service a lot of people enjoy. We felt we would have a wide-open field,” Kramer said. “Also … the growing, dynamic … (Indian and Pakistani) and Chinese business communities have been underserved, so we wanted to focus on them, as well as the rest of the community.”

Bridge Bank of Silicon Valley is a full-service institution, geared to serving small and middle-market manufacturing, technology, real estate and professional services businesses. Kramer is Bridge Bank’s chairman and also serves as a member of its board of directors.

Its founders’ perceptions of an unfilled market need would appear to have been correct. From the Santa Clara-based bank’s official opening May 14 to June 30, its total assets grew from $18.6 million to $47.7 million, and its total loan commitments are $9.2 million, Kramer said.

Both the staffing and ambience of Bridge Bank support the founders’ vision of personalized service. “We don’t have tellers - we have business banking specialists that can do far more than tellers. They have the experience and the authority,” Kramer said.

Bridge Bank President and CEO Daniel Myers said the bank also recognizes the importance of Asians to Silicon Valley. “They are quite vibrant in the community. Thirty percent of (area) businesses were started by these individuals,” he said. Myers noted that three of the nine members of Bridge Bank’s board of directors are Chinese and that one-quarter of the employees are “at least bilingual, (speaking) Cantonese or Mandarin as well as English.”

Bridge Bank’s officers have, on average, 25 years of banking experience, said Myers, the former chief operating officer of Heritage Bank of Commerce.

Kramer, who retired in 2000 after practicing internal medicine in Los Altos for 25 years, said he has been interested in business and entrepreneuring since his teen years, when he assisted his father, who owned a plastics firm. While still practicing medicine in Los Altos, he formed the California Industrial Medical Clinics, which grew to 12 occupational health clinics in Northern California. He also became involved in real estate, building medical and dental clinics. Real estate led to his involvement in banking. With a small group of other entre-preneurs, he began National Intercity Bank, which he soon assisted in merging with nearby Silicon Valley Bank. Kramer left Silicon Valley’s board in 1995 to become a director of Sand Hill Capital, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park. About a year ago, he and other investors began the groundwork for Bridge Bank.

As to the future, Kramer said his involvement with Bridge Bank “is keeping me very busy … My goal is to build this into a major player (while) keeping its focus on the community.”