Bill Cooper, who turned a failing savings and loan into Minnesota’s third-largest banking company, TCF Financial Corp., and was a dominating figure in the state’s business and political communities, died Tuesday night. He was 73.
Cooper was ill with cancer in recent months. He retired as chief executive of TCF in 2015, turning its day to day leadership to Craig Dahl, a protégé. Cooper was chairman of the board at the time of his death.
Cooper was an executive at a Detroit bank in the 1985 when he was hired to be chief executive of Twin City Federal Savings and Loan, a thrift that was burdened with toxic loans that took years to clean up.
He took the company public in 1986, rechartered it as a bank that focused on middle-class customers with a product called “totally free checking.” It grew to nearly 90 branches in Minnesota and about 250 more in six other states and $21 billion in total assets.
“Bill transformed our company more than once and mentored many great leaders,” Dahl said in a statement. “Over 30 years, Bill showed tremendous leadership and courage, pioneering numerous innovations in the banking industry and establishing a rich tradition of philanthropy and community involvement within TCF. We will miss him greatly.”
He was chairman of the Minnesota Republican party in the late 1990s, a backer of Gov. Arne Carlson and supporter of charter schools. He remained a vocal activist who was often critical of the state’s tax and regulatory policies.
“He had very high standards, very high expectations of both himself and other people, and he lived by them,” Carlson said.
Carlson said he also admired that Cooper came from a modest background, worked his way through school and served as a police officer before getting into the banking industry. “Bill Cooper is one of the people who truly lived the American dream, and I deeply respect him for that,” Carlson said.
Keith Downey, current chair of the state GOP, said in a statement, “What many don’t know was his commitment to improving education in Minnesota, including later in life launching quite a number of very successful charter schools.”
Vance Opperman, lead director at TCF and a Twin Cities publisher and investor, said one of Cooper’s “greatest legacies” is Friends of Education, a network of charter schools in the region. “He came from a very modest background and never lost touch with the importance of creating opportunities for the economically disadvantaged, particularly through education,” Opperman said.
Cooper first retired from TCF in 2005 but returned in July 2008 as the nation’s housing crisis began to weigh heavily on the performance of banks.
TCF didn’t make risky subprime loans to consumers with weak credit histories and, when the U.S. government forced banks across the nation to accept bailout funds and investments, Cooper resisted. He became an outspoken critic of the behavior of executives at larger bank companies and the regulators who missed their excesses.
“I certainly don’t need some clown in Washington telling me what to do,” Cooper said in 2009. “The regulators never rang the bell once as countless billions of dollars in losses were going on … and now they’re bayoneting the innocent.”
The U.S. Treasury sold its stake in TCF in late 2009, relatively quickly compared to other banks, and made a profit on it.
For years after the financial crisis and recession, Cooper and TCF were subject of rumors that he intended to sell it to a larger bank. The firm’s official line was that it was always for sale at the right price, but Cooper said that he had a four-year turnaround plan in mind. “It’s not time to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators,” he said in 2010.
After the crisis passed, Cooper and TCF took some criticism from some shareholders and shareholder-rights organizations over the size and structure of the company’s executive pay.
When he told investors and analysts that he was putting Dahl in charge as CEO, Cooper said, “Frankly, he’s already kind of taken over. Sometimes I get invited to a meeting, and sometimes I don’t.”
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