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In 2020, Scott Gaudin put all his eggs in one basket. At the height of the COVID pandemic, he walked away from a steady paycheck at a publicly traded bank, cashed out the entirety of his savings and retirement accounts, and set about the task of raising $30 million to purchase a small community bank.
Just nine months later, and after more than 200 meetings—mostly by Zoom, since meetings in person were discouraged—he had raised all the necessary capital and been approved by regulators to acquire Commerce Community Bank in the north Louisiana town of Oak Grove.
It was a risk, to be sure, but not one that he took lightly. Gaudin—Business Report’s Young Businessperson of the Year—had done his homework and knew that area business owners were starving for personalized, concierge-level service. Banks had offered it in the past, but they’d either been sold or grown too big to focus on small- to medium-sized businesses and their owners.
Renaming the bank as Currency Bank, he branded the institution as “The Bank for Business Owners” and centralized its operations in Baton Rouge (while retaining the Oak Grove branch). From the outset, Currency Bank has deliberately searched for shareholders who would also use the bank as their own, thereby proactively protecting their own investment.
“We now have 144 shareholders that, thankfully, bought into that vision,” Gaudin says. It’s an impressive list that includes Brandon Landry, founder of Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux; Flynn Foster, president and CEO of Guaranty Corporation; Dr. Rubin Patel, founder and CEO of Patient Plus Urgent Care; and Mitch Rotolo, founder of Rotolo’s Pizzeria.
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