Banking scion

Mid-life assessment prods Ron Fick to ensure his family’s place in local history – again

If Ron Fick had lived during California’s gold rush, as his great-grandfather did, his passion for hunting and fishing may have lured him to the life of a mountain man. Instead this banking scion followed a path blazed by an earlier generation.

Twenty years ago after mid-life reassessment, Fick honored an obligation to family legacy by founding Borel Private Bank & Trust Co. in San Mateo with his brother, Harold Fick, and cousin, Miller Ream. In 2001, Massachusetts-based Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc. bought the $360 million asset bank for $113.3 million, a price tag that made the rich family wealthier.

But Fick says money wasn’t the motivation for establishing a new family-run bank in 1980.

“Back then, when my brother and I were working at different financial institutions, it became apparent, in our judgment, that we were just cogs in a bigger wheel,” says Fick. “Not only didn’t we have the ability to control our own destiny, but we wanted to put into practice a better way to serve bank clients.”

His turning point was nurtured by a family history that dates back to the tail of the gold rush when in 1855 Swiss immigrant Alfred Borel came to the Bay Area to start A. Borel & Co., a private bank that processed the assets and wealth of local residents and managed real estate and other Bay Area investments for clients from Switzerland. In 1862 Alfred Borel returned to Switzerland and his brother, Antoine, took over running the bank.

The Fick brothers are Antonie Borel’s great-grandsons on their mother’s side. The first Borel bank dissolved shortly after the deaths of its founding partners in the early 1900s. What was left was partly absorbed by Wells Fargo & Co. of San Francisco.

The first Borel bankers’ fortune grew by helping start the Union Oil Co. of California (Unical), buying San Francisco’s California Street cable-car line and becoming principal owners of the Spring Valley Water Co. One of Antoine Borel’s real estate deals was the purchase of Napa’s Rancho Petaluma.

Despite the family fortune, “we had a pretty solid middle-class upbringing,” Fick says. “Most of my relatives went to Stanford [University], but I didn’t.”

Bucking family tradition, Fick attended San Jose State College were he channeled a passion for California’s past into a history degree. Graduating in 1963, he edited and published “San Francisco Is No More,” a collection of letters written by Antoine Borel Jr. during the era of the 1906 earthquake.

After college, Fick entered
financial services and for 20 years learned banking at Wells Fargo & Co. Meanwhile, his brother, Harold, worked for local, independent banks.

In the late 1970s — when contemporaries were either suffering mid-life crises or making the most of the disco era — Fick’s mind was on other, more entrepreneurial matters. He decided to strike out with two of his relatives to re-establish the family banking legacy.

“We made a conscious decision to change and try to do something that we felt was better,” he says.

He says many of Borel’s attitudes today can be traced to the business practices, such as personalized, hands-on client services and community involvement, that made his great-grandfather a success.

“I think there is a lot of similarity to that,” Fick says. “Back in those days there was no such thing as FDIC insurance or anything else. An institution was only as successful as the faith the clients had in a banker’s honesty and abilities.”

Those abilities also extend to the community.

“He is someone that has set the example by doing things,” says Linda Asbury, president and CEO of the San Mateo Chamber of Commerce. “Through Borel Bank, he has fostered community involvement. His leadership by example has encouraged and allowed others to give back to the community.”

An avid reader of history, Fick is active with the San Mateo Historical Society and has volunteered on committees for the San Mateo Community College District and for his nearby home community, Atherton.

In business, Fick says another theme that has found it’s way to the 21st century from the original Borel bank is a focus on continuity.

“Because I have a lot of the historical records of the original Borel bank, there were a lot of clients stayed with the bank for very long periods of time,” he says. “That was an important aspect in their success and it certainly has been in ours.”

Fick says Borel Private Bank & Trust was sold to finance growth and minimize job reductions. Unlike other suitors, Boston Private wanted to keep the Borel name and the management team. With the strength of a larger corporation behind it, Borel
recently expanded to Palo Alto and has designs to ring the Bay Area with branches in select communities.

“There are still clients, I swear, that don’t know we were acquired,” he says as a point of pride.

Learning from history, Fick says unlike the original, the current Borel bank will not enter the dustbin of history after its founders retire.

“There is a personal satisfaction in that, unquestionably,” he says. “If we had sold to a number of other institutions [beside Boston Private], the name would have disappeared.”