“Everyone’s looking forward to coming back together,” Tangen said. “There’s a great amount of enthusiasm for this project. And there’s a real visual change for North Main Street.”
Unlike most chief executives of banks around BankFive’s size ($1.9 billion in assets and 14 branches), Tangen didn’t start out in traditional banking. She worked for Fidelity Investments for 15 years, and then for a similar span at State Street Corp. Tangen arrived at community banking almost by accident, after joining the board of BayCoast Bank. A consulting gig led to a job as chief operating officer for the Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod, before she was tapped to take over at BankFive in early 2020.
Nearly a dozen banks were once headquartered along Fall River’s main drag. Of those, only BankFive is left. The board, Tangen said, has no interest in converting to a public company, a process that usually results in a community bank getting gobbled up by a much bigger buyer.
“We have a board of directors that is very committed to the South Coast,” Tangen said. “They know they could probably make a lot of money if we were to go public, but they actually wrote it in the bylaws that we want to remain a mutual [bank]. . . . Everything is about making sure we can thrive as a mutual bank for the community.”
The Laborers’ Local 22 joined a cavalcade of unions endorsing Michelle Wu in her first campaign for Boston mayor four years ago. But this time around, Local 22 is backing challenger Josh Kraft. Local 22 gave Kraft his second endorsement from a construction union last week after a similar vote from Ironworkers Local 7.
The mayor, meanwhile, has racked up 10 early union endorsements of her own, including from the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and several Service Employees International Union locals. A campaign spokeswoman for Wu says she has “put working people at the center of her Administration’s priorities,” earning the support of a diverse array of unions.
Only one construction union endorsement is listed for Wu so far, from the Laborers’ Local 223. However, many more are up for grabs.
Local 22’s endorsement of Kraft, a longtime nonprofit leader and a son of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is notable in part because now-retired Local 22 business manager Lou Mandarini Jr.’s son works in City Hall as a senior aide of Wu’s.
Current business manager Daniel Ottaviano provided a statement expressing frustration with the challenges that his members have with finding work due to a slowdown in activity during Wu’s tenure. In particular, Ottaviano cited “her lack of responsiveness.” Relatively high interest rates and construction costs are primary factors, though critics often point to new affordable housing and environmental standards put in place under Wu’s direction as well.
“They’ve got too many folks idle on the bench, not working, and work is their lifeblood,” Kraft said. “They’re frustrated. That’s really where this stems from. I’ve made the commitment to them that I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we can get projects going for labor so they can get people to work.”
King takes charge at Nasuni
Sam King says she wants to build a “global brand with a Boston heart.”
And the tech veteran believes she’ll get that opportunity now that she has taken over as chief executive of Nasuni, a privately owned cloud-storage company based in the Seaport.
King started in the new role last week, a year after stepping down from the chief executive post at Burlington cybersecurity firm Veracode. She has been busy over the past week meeting with many of Nasuni’s 500-plus employees, aka “Nasunistas.” She succeeds Paul Flanagan, who is retiring after eight years but sticking around as nonexecutive chairman of Nasuni’s board. Nasuni was valued at $1.2 billion last year, when Vista Equity Partners led a round of investment in the firm.
Since leaving Veracode, King made a point of taking a break and spending more time with family and friends. Last fall, she participated in the nonprofit Civic Action Project’s executive fellows program, which brings together a small group of corporate, government, and nonprofit leaders to discuss public policy issues. Doing so made her even more aware of the state economy’s strong points and how she wanted to remain a part of it all for her next chief executive gig — a goal that the Nasuni job fulfills.
“It was the icing on the cake that this was headquartered in Boston,” King said. “I love the fact that we have many dimensions represented here [in Greater Boston]. It’s not all just tech. It’s biotech. It’s health care. The confluence of all those things coming together is what gives it a richness.”
Tech leaders bank on Boston
With prominent universities under siege by the Trump administration, it can feel like the engine behind this region’s entrepreneurship ecosystem is under constant threat.
But civic and business leaders are pushing back at the notion that our innovation sector has been hobbled.
Last Wednesday, the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership hosted a panel at the UMass Club with a focus on “Entrepreneurial Support Organizations,” groups that provide support for startups, and issued a report calling for better coordination among ESOs and up to $200 million in state funds to support them.
Speaking on the panel was state economic development secretary Yvonne Hao and cochairs of the Legislature’s economic development committee, Senator Barry Finegold and Representative Carole Fiola. Hao said she had just met with a prominent local business leader who worried that it felt like Massachusetts was under siege. Hao offered an optimistic response, pointing to the young people who arrive each year for college or graduate education. “We’re always a startup in Massachusetts,” Hao said. “We always have 500,000 of the best and brightest brains coming here to study.”
A mile away at the MassChallenge headquarters, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable hosted its own panel with Citizens Financial Group chief executive Bruce Van Saun, MassChallenge chief executive Cait Brumme, Vestigo Ventures cofounder Mark Casady, and Sundai Club cofounder Artem Lukoianov. One point of discussion: Boston is in fourth place in PitchBook’s ranking of the world’s top metro areas for startups, behind Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.
Brumme acknowledged the challenges that the local startup sector faces, such as high housing costs and cuts to federal research funds. But she noted that Boston has strengths in fintech, digital health, robotics, biotech, and cleantech.
Van Saun chimed in: “We shouldn’t have a chip on our shoulder that we’re number four,” he added. “Being in the top four in the world says a lot.” And Casady added: “We’re definitely outsized, both in sports and innovation.”
Lukoianov said he believes Cambridge might be the best city anywhere to foster innovation.
“It’s probably the only place in the world where you go to a random bar and people don’t talk about football,” he said. “They talk about AI.”
That prompted Roundtable president JD Chesloff to declare: “I’m hanging out at the wrong bars.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.
