Mike Vogel | 10/1/2010

• Thomas G. Kuntz SunTrust Banks corporate executive vice president, geographic banking executive SunTrust Bank, Florida chairman, president, CEO Orlando Competition: "It's always been competitive. There's never been a time when I would have said, ‘This is good. This is easy.' It's always hard, but that's why we work hard." Father of the brides: One twin daughter just married, and the other is getting married. "We spend a lot of time talking about weddings right now." The job: "I've got the best job in the world. I spend a lot of time in a lot of nice places." [Photo: Brook Pifer]

Coming out of Rollins College in 1978, New York native Thomas G. Kuntz took a job as a management associate with what's now SunTrust Bank. Figuring the bank was nice enough to hire him, he set a goal of staying at least a year.

He exceeded that goal 32 times over. For SunTrust, he's lived in Orlando, Tampa and south Florida, run regions and international and national and corporate divisions. In the last two years, he has been promoted twice. First, the Winter Park resident was put in charge of companywide commercial banking. As of April, he was assigned responsibility for the Atlanta-based bank's 16 geographic regions, covering 1,700 branches in 11 states running from Baltimore west to Memphis and south to Homestead, including retail, commercial and business banking, and private wealth management. That's in addition to heading SunTrust Bank, Florida. He's also the immediate past vice chairman of Enterprise Florida. (Vice chairman is the top private sector post at the state economic development group; the governor always is the chairman.)

Kuntz says SunTrust is expanding its Small Business Administration lending. And he's nothing if not optimistic. Witness his views on all the new federal financial regulation: "Yes, there's going to be change, but it probably presents us with the single greatest opportunity in my 32 years to distinguish ourselves," says Kuntz, 54.

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