Robert Yohanan was an executive at the First National Bank of Chicago and Lake Shore National Bank before teaming up with two colleagues to co-found First Bank & Trust of Evanston and its parent company, First Evanston Bancorp, during the community bank startup boom of the 1990s.
“He was the visionary behind what I called the ‘Bank of Bob,’ which was the First Bank & Trust of Evanston, and he married the idea of a community bank with being a big commercial lender,” said one of the bank’s co-founders, former Evanston Mayor Jay Lytle.
Yohanan, 84, died of pneumonia — a complication from Alzheimer’s disease — on Nov. 2 at Evanston Hospital, said his son, Simon. He was a longtime Kenilworth resident.
Born Robert Richard Yohanan in Chicago to Assyrian immigrant parents, Yohanan grew up in Old Town and graduated from DePaul University Academy. He attended DePaul University for one year before being appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he earned a degree in 1962. Yohanan then served on active naval duty, rising to lieutenant commander and serving in Vietnam from 1966 until 1968.
Returning to Chicago in 1968, Yohanan enrolled at the University of Chicago, receiving a master’s degree in international relations. He took a job with First National Bank of Chicago, working with the bank’s future Chairman and CEO A. Robert Abboud, then a senior vice president at the bank, leading its expansion overseas.
Yohanan and Abboud “hit it off right away,” Yohanan’s son said. Yohanan accepted assignments in a variety of locations, including Beirut, Dublin and London. He was promoted to vice president in the bank’s international banking department in 1973.
“Bob was one of the finest bankers First Chicago ever had,” said Abboud. “He was a great gentleman. I sent him to Jamaica and the Middle East and every assignment that he was given, he was just top-notch.”
Yohanan later was named chief credit officer in the bank’s worldwide banking department. In 1979, Abboud tapped Yohanan to oversee the bank’s newly formed securities and commodities lending section, which was organized to pursue loan opportunities in the commodity and financial futures markets as well as lending to agricultural concerns.
“The bank is placing increased emphasis in the whole area of commodity business,” Yohanan told the Tribune in 1979.
In 1981, Yohanan was promoted to senior vice president at First Chicago. In the spring of 1984, First Chicago acquired Chicago-based American National Bank and Trust. First Chicago’s then-president, Richard L. Thomas, tasked Yohanan with overseeing the acquisition, which at the outset placed two multibillion-dollar Loop banks operating a block and a half apart as entirely separate institutions under common ownership.
Yohanan left First Chicago in 1987 to become president and chief operating officer of Chicago’s Lake Shore National Bank. He resigned from the bank in 1994 after First Chicago announced that it would acquire Lake Shore. The following year, Yohanan teamed up with Lytle and Howard Kain, formerly of Banc One, to form First Bank & Trust of Evanston.
“We just think there is a tremendous need out there,” Yohanan told the Tribune in 1995.
As CEO, Yohanan saw its role as both a community bank and a reliable lender to established, family-owned or privately held industrial firms that specialized in distribution, transportation, manufacturing, wholesaling or warehousing. That meant that First Bank & Trust of Evanston shied away from riskier credits such as commercial real estate loans, and that served the bank well during the global financial crisis of 2008.
“We sailed through the financial crisis,” Yohanan told the Tribune in 2017.
Retired LaSalle Bank Chairman Norman Bobins called Yohanan “a very good friend and a very good banker.”
“He was very attuned to the community in which his bank was located,” Bobins said. “He understood people, and he understood business, and those two things were paramount in his being a successful banker.”
Yohanan also served two terms on the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from 1997 until 2003.
Kain retired from First Bank & Trust of Evanston in 2016, and Yohanan oversaw the bank’s sale the following year to Byline Bancorp. After that, he served on Byline’s board for three years and also was involved with Catholic Charities and the Women’s Ordination Conference, a group that works to ordain women as Catholic priests.
In addition to his son, Yohanan is survived by his wife, Joan; two daughters, Emma and Caroline; another son, Michael; and three grandchildren.
Services were held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
