By Jeff McKinney
The Cincinnati Enquirer

National City Corp.'s new top executive in Greater Cincinnati plans to add up to 15 branches in three years and is open to acquisitions once the bank completes its $2.1 billion buyout of Provident Financial Group Inc., the region's second-largest banking company.

The company will formally announce today that T. Michael Price will serve as chief executive of its Greater Cincinnati market and its 500,000 customers.

Price, 41, will join four other executives - two from National City in Cleveland and two from Provident in Cincinnati - who will head the five-member management team of the merged bank.

Provident agreed in February to sell to National City; and on Thursday, Provident shareholders voted to approve the deal, creating one of the nation's 10 largest banks with assets of more than $130 billion.

Approval by the Federal Reserve could come any day, and the merger is expected to be completed by July. Provident will lose its name by February.

The other four members of National City's local management team are:

• Michael P. McCuen, president, will be responsible for managing wholesale banking. He was executive vice president of National City's Greater Cleveland Corporate Banking Group.

• Vincent D. Rinaldi, president and CEO, National City Commerce Capital Corp., which combines the leasing business of Provident and National City. He was executive vice president of equipment leasing, financing and residential mortgage operations for Provident Financial Group.

• Brian J. Cullina, executive vice president and chief credit officer, handling credit administration for wholesale banking and leasing in the region. He was senior vice president of structured finance in corporate banking at National City.

• Amin Akbar, senior vice president of community development. His duties will include the planning, implementation and management of all development activities in the market. At Provident, his duties included overseeing community development and fair lending activities.

Robert L. Hoverson, Provident's president and CEO, will retire following completion of the merger.

"These people will be managing the process, so you want to have them in there sooner rather than later," said Fred Cummings of KeyBanc Capital Markets in Cleveland.

He said National City wants to get its management team in quickly to help retain Provident customers and maintain momentum the bank has started to build new business. Provident has assets of $16.7 billion, deposits of $9.9 billion and 65 branches, 52 of which are in Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky. Its stock closed Thursday at $39.23, down 22 cents.

Price talked about adding branches and being open to acquisitions as well as aggressively pricing products to attract new customers.

"If customers are thinking about leaving, they will have to think twice because we're going to have some pretty good offers on the table," said Price, who will continue to run the bank's consumer and small-business banking units.

He would not comment on how many of Provident's 3,200 employees could lose their jobs. The Enquirer has reported between 400 to 800 jobs could be cut.

E-mail jmckinney@enquirer.com