Triad Chief Named One of Top CEOs
May 24, 2010
ULTIMATE CEOs: Glisson continues tradition of good business decisions.
from Dolly Penland, The Jacksonville Business Journal here.
When Don Glisson Jr.'s father bought Triad Financial Services Inc. in 1977 for $25,000, the company was in poor condition. "It wasn't even worth that," said Glisson Jr. "It was a couple of million in debt. We made a decision to pay everyone what was owed [rather than] declare bankruptcy."
It was a shrewd move that has allowed Triad to grow into what is now the second-largest provider of loans for the manufactured housing industry. Now, seven years into his role as CEO, Glisson Jr. continues that tradition of good business decisions.
Last year, he completed a significant acquisition of CIS Financial. Glisson Jr. is now identifying new lines of business for Triad.
"We think that we will do well with other larger ticket consumer items, like boats, RVs and even possibly aircraft financing," he said. "When you are making a loan on a manufactured home, which is generally someone's primary home, it's done as a consumer loan. We have the lenders and the infrastructure. It's just a matter of branding ourselves in those industries. It also requires more lenders providing more dollars for us to lend."
He anticipates that the banking industry will return to more normal lending practices in the next year.
In 1977, Triad employed eight people who focused their services in North Florida. Today, the company is doing business in 45 states and has 130 employees. Annual revenue for the company is $21 million. Triad's total loan volume is about $250 million annually, and it handles loan servicing in excess of $1 billion.
Glisson Jr. led the company to a profitable year in 2009 while the industry was down nationally.
"He has a really good gut for what the numbers are doing, being able to really understand where this industry is heading and where Triad is heading," said Jed Gleim, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Triad. "The industry has seen tough times. The sales in general have gone down dramatically since 1995, but we have been able to continue the growth. The most important part of that growth is we have kept quality standards at a high level."
Robert Larison Jr., president at Atlantic Coast Bank said, "I have always found him to be very ethical, very honest, very easy to work with and generally a nice guy. He's just a great businessman and a great human being. Quite often you don't find those two characteristics in the same person."