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9:00am | Long Beach-based Farmers & Merchants Bank has a new chief information officer with background experience from several large corporations, including Union Bank, Southern California Edison and Northrop Grumman.

F&M, which is headquartered on Pine Avenue in downtown Long Beach, on Friday named Ken Nagel chief information officer and senior vice president of information technology services. 

F&M’s shares are mostly held by the Walker family. Its stock trades at lofty prices. It was trading at $4,100 per share on Friday. The bank specializes in commercial and small business banking along with business loan programs.

While the bank seems to have a positive reputation in the Long Beach business community for helping build small businesses in and around the area, and it has long been credited with boosting the development of downtown Long Beach, the bank has been hammered from time to time with a few bad headlines. 

In late November, the Los Angeles Times reported a member of F&M’s founding family pled guilty to stealing nearly $2 million from a customer's account. “Matthew J. Walker, who managed the bank's Laguna Hills branch, entered the guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford in Santa Ana,” the L.A. Times reported. “Walker's attorney said he squandered the stolen money on a failed investment.”

In 2006, a handful of F&M shareholders questioned bank management over a more than $26 million correction to the bank's annual financial report for 2004. The bank had held its then 98th annual shareholders meeting at the Westin Long Beach four months late because of the financial misstatements. The meeting pitted the great-grandchildren of bank founder C.J. Walker against each other in a battle over the direction of the bank.

Over the years, Marcus Walker, the great-grandson of the bank's founder, has challenged the bank's board, working to get board members he supported seated on the board and working to get the thinly traded shares of the bank to split. 

Nagel will lead an initiative to advance F&M’s information technology systems to support organizational growth and expansion, according to a statement from the bank.
 
“Ken Nagel’s breadth of expertise in the banking industry and experience managing enterprise-wide information systems for global corporations will play an integral role in delivering the technological infrastructure to support this growth,” Henry Walker, F&M’s CEO, said in a statement.
 
Nagel has more than 20 years of experience managing and implementing information technology strategies for organizations. Nagel previously served as the senior vice president and integrated banking CIO with Union Bank. He also served as chief architect for the bank’s $200 million banking technology transformation project, a consolidated technology platform that enhanced Union Bank’s customer service and supported organizational growth.
 
Nagel’s prior experience includes the development of technology applications for Southern California Edison, B&M Associates and Northrop Grumman. He also has experience as a flight deck troubleshooter on the USS Midway while in the United States Navy.
  
The Yorba Linda resident holds an Executive MBA from Pepperdine University. 

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