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An accountant and an investment banker, wondering if they really wanted to spend a big part of their lives together, decided to meet for dinner in 1999. Confidentiality was important to both men, so a private room was booked at the Box Tree, then one of the city's most romantic restaurants, whose decor of dark wood, stained glass and a fireplace was described by The New York Times as "dreamy."
"It was a place where you got engaged," the investment banker recalled. "And we did."
Engaged in the business sense, that is.
Shortly after their meeting, Signature Bank was launched by Chief Executive Joseph DePaolo, a former senior audit manager at accounting giant KPMG, and Chairman Scott Shay, a former mergers-and-acquisitions specialist at Salomon Brothers. Under their leadership, Signature has proved to be one of the most successful startups in banking over the past 20 years.
The institution now sports 27 branches, $22 billion in assets and a market value of $5.5 billion. Since going public in 2004, Signature's stock has returned about 650%, or nearly 10 times that of the S&P 500 and double that of the next-best-performing bank, SVB Financial Group, the parent of California's Silicon Valley Bank.
Yet it remains almost unknown. No street signs proclaim the existence of its branches, which are tucked away in office buildings. It doesn't advertise because management doesn't think its clientele of small and midsize businesses would work with a bank based on how catchy...