U.S. Bank Names SBA Division President, Accentuates Its Commitment to Small Business

U.S. Bank has named Julie Huston to lead its Small Business Administration (SBA) lending as president of U.S. Bank SBA Division. She is based in San Diego, where the company’s SBA Division is headquartered.

Through its SBA Division, U.S. Bank is a national leader in SBA lending to businesses across America. Huston, who has 24 years of commercial and SBA lending experience, will oversee employees at the division headquarters in San Diego and the specially-designated SBA sales business centers nationwide.

Prior to joining U.S. Bank, she was chief operating officer of CapitalSource/MainStreet Lender, located in Denver. Prior to that, she was a senior vice president and sales manager for GE Commercial Finance’s franchise finance operations in Scottsdale, Ariz. She also held senior management positions with Textron Financial Corp. and AT&T Capital Corporation/Newcourt Financial/CIT. A Montana native, Huston earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Montana, Missoula.

"SBA lending is a strategically important component of U.S. Bank’s commitment to small business and we are committed to significantly grow SBA Division under Julie’s leadership,” said Elliot Jaffee, executive vice president at U.S. Bank, to whom Huston will report. "Julie has demonstrated critical leadership attributes and achieved great success throughout her career. We are very pleased that she is now part of the U.S. Bank team, leading our SBA business.”

Small business has long been a focus for U.S. Bank. The company was recognized by the City Business Journals Network SMB Insights 2010 Brand Survey as the number one bank according to small business owners. As of June 2010, U.S. Bank lending to small businesses was more than $13 billion. U.S. Bank is consistently a top Small Business Administration (SBA) lender, ranking in the top three in 12 of the SBA districts it serves and in the top five in 18 districts. SBA Express, Community Express and Patriot Express products help companies with less than six months in business. The company continues to innovate for small business owners, recently introducing ScoreBoard, an online tool for monitoring and analyzing credit card spending, remote deposit capture to make daily deposits easier and FlexPerks suite of card rewards to small business. U.S. Bank measures the pulse of small businesses through the U.S. Bank Small Business Annual Survey, most recently released in July 2010.

U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), with $283 billion in assets as of June 30, 2010, is the parent company of U.S. Bank, the fifth largest commercial bank in the United States. The company operates 3,002 banking offices in 24 states and 5,309 ATMs and provides a comprehensive line of banking, brokerage, insurance, investment, mortgage, trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses and institutions. Visit U.S. Bancorp on the web at usbank.com.

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