COVER FEATURE
CV3
A Restart, Not a Startup LIKE A PHOENIX, BILL TESSAR’S CV3 RISES FROM THE ASHES OF A GUTTED BUSINESS.
By Katie Bean
s he watched the team he built get dismantled, William
reached a milestone $3 billion in loan production in 2022. But its success couldn’t offset investors’ uncertainty surrounding Pacific Western after the failures of other troubled regional banks, including Silicon Valley Bank. At the end of 2022, Tessar said the bank approached him about spinning off Civic, which he was willing to do. However, as the bank’s situation changed over the first few weeks of
2023, the deal fell apart, Tessar said. His position was eliminated, and the bank said it would restructure. But after two rounds of layoffs and ceasing loan origination, it was clear that everything that had gone into making Civic a success was becoming completely undone. “I’m a father of three, a grandfa- ther of three, and a surrogate father of 500 that were at Civic. A lot of these relationships go back over two
A
Tessar couldn’t just sit on the sidelines. He had to act.
“It was devastating for me to see so many capable human beings, that did nothing but what they were asked, end up unemployed,” he said. Tessar joined private lender Civic Financial Group in 2017 as president, and the company was acquired by Pacific Western Bank in 2021. Civic
14 | think realty magazine :: november – december 2023
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