John Nichols was promoted to executive VP and chief credit officer at MidSouth Bank, and Carolyn Lay has been named senior VP and chief retail officer.
Nichols, who previously served as a senior VP and president of the bank’s west Louisiana region, based in Lake Charles, will retain the regional president’s responsibilities until a successor is named. Nichols will office at the bank’s Lafayette headquarters on Versailles Boulevard and will continue to be a member of the Lake Charles market’s regional loan committee.
Nichols now oversees the commercial/consumer underwriting departments and loan operations department and is in charge of developing the bank’s loan policies and practices, along with its credit risk review policies and procedures. He also identifies credit risk situations and provides guidance to line of business lending managers.
Nichols joined MidSouth Bank in 2001, having previously worked as senior VP and business banking manager for Bank One (now JPMorgan Chase) in Lake Charles and Alexandria. He has 34 years of banking experience.
Lay was VP and regional retail manager at the bank for the past six years, overseeing the bank’s locations in Lafayette, Lake Charles, Sulphur and Jennings.
As CRO, she is providing strategic direction and day-to-day supervision for the retail sales and service of the bank’s 35 banking centers in Louisiana and Texas, replacing Dwight Utz, who left the bank in mid-2009 for the president and CEO position at ECB Bancorp Inc., the holding company for The East Carolina Bank in Engelhard, N.C. Lay, who has 32 years of banking experience, had been serving as interim CRO since Utz’s departure.
Lay has been employed by MidSouth Bank for 11 years, having initially managed the bank’s Oil Center branch.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.