Doug Lawson, who has been serving as the president and chief operating officer of Field & Main Bank as it merges with Stock Yards Bank & Trust, has been hired as the 12th president of the Peoples Bank of Kentucky.
The announcement was made at Field & Main Tuesday morning. Lawson said he will be leaving Henderson on Friday with this first day on the job at People’s Bank of Kentucky in Flemingsburg on Tuesday, Sept. 8. The Field & Main and Stock Yards merger will be completed this fall, according to past Hendersonian article.
Lawson in an interview with the Hendersonian on Wednesday said that the new position was not something he was looking for and he was not wanting to move from Henderson, where he has been 7 ½ years.
Lawson said he and his wife, when first approached for the job, both said it was a “hard no.” With prayer and more thought, though, they saw that “God is working it out” and soon decided to make the move.
He said on Wednesday it started about 35 days ago, when a headhunter for the bank reached out to him–not to offer the job initially but to look for assistance in finding someone for the position. Lawson said after discussions, “I was what they were looking for.”
He said Peoples Bank of Kentucky has assets of $585 million, which puts it at a bit smaller than what Field & Main, with $860 million in assets, was before the merger. By comparison, Stock Yards Bank & Trust comes in at $10.3 billion in assets.
Lawson said he’s wanted to be in the top position at a bank for as long as he can remember. One moment he said he recalls is walking into a bank with his grandfather as a boy.
“He told me one time, ‘You’ll make a great banker one day, Doug’ and I never forgot,” Lawson said.
Flemingsburg is also closer to Lexington, which is where one of Lawson’s daughters lives, and he said that is one of the benefits of the move.
In the meantime, Stock Yards will need to fill Lawson’s spot. He said Stock Yards will have an announcement in September. He didn’t know if it will be a person already here or someone from another location and said he’s interested in finding out who ends up with the position.
“They’re not taking any options off the table,” he said. “They’ll hire the right person, I guarantee.”
Lawson started his banking career in 1993 with his first full-time position. From Wolcott, Ind., where he grew up on the family farm, Lawson made it to Kentucky for college at Murray State University.
One of the pieces of the new job Lawson is looking forward to is getting back to doing more work in agriculture lending, which is a main piece of the business at Peoples Bank of Kentucky, he said.
