Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

When you look at Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC), are you seeing a small regional bank, or a boutique private bank with a clear growth strategy? With total assets of $7.44 billion and a market capitalization of $0.43 billion as of November 2025, Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation is executing a focused shift to private banking, which is why its Wealth Management division's Assets Under Management (AUM) grew to $12.9 billion in Q3 2025. This strategy is defintely paying off in revenue mix, where wealth management fee income contributed $15.8 million, or 22%, of total revenue in the third quarter alone, but what does that mean for its core lending business and future profitability?

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC) History

You are looking for the foundational story of Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation, and it's a classic example of a community bank that strategically evolved into a specialized private bank. The direct takeaway is that Peapack-Gladstone Bank, founded in 1921, transitioned from a local New Jersey institution to a boutique private bank serving the affluent Metro New York market, driven by a key leadership change in 2012 and a successful rebrand in 2025.

This long-term focus on the client and a pivot to private banking and wealth management is why the company is reporting strong 2025 growth, like the $12.9 billion in Assets Under Management/Administration (AUM/AUA) as of September 30, 2025. That's a significant jump from the end of 2024. It shows the strategy is working.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

The company was established in 1921, originally as Peapack-Gladstone National Bank.

Original location

The original location was in the twin communities of Peapack and Gladstone, New Jersey. This was a direct response to a local need, as residents had to travel to Oldwick for basic financial services.

Founding team members

The institution was founded by a group of visionary business leaders and community members in Peapack-Gladstone, New Jersey. While specific names are not widely published, the initial spark is often attributed to a hardware store owner and his business partner.

Initial capital/funding

The bank commenced operations with approximately $3,000 in liquid assets. By November 1925, the company reorganized as Peapack-Gladstone Trust Company with a capital stock of $120,000, surpassing the state's minimum requirement.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

The most transformative period for Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation has been the last decade, marked by a deliberate move away from traditional community banking to a specialized private banking model. This wasn't a slow drift; it was a focused, strategic pivot. You can see this in the numbers.

The 2025 financial results show the payoff. For the third quarter of 2025, the company reported net income of $9.6 million and diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.54, a 21% increase over the prior quarter. That's a clean one-liner on performance.

Here's the quick math: Total loans reached $6.0 billion and total deposits hit $6.6 billion as of September 30, 2025, reflecting the success of their commercial and industrial (C&I) lending focus, which accounted for 69% of new business originations in Q3 2025. What this estimate hides is the intense competition in the Metro New York market, but their nonperforming assets dropping to $84.1 million, or 1.13% of total assets, suggests they are managing credit risk defintely well.

Key transformative decisions include:

• The 2012 Leadership Change: A new CEO appointment shifted the core business model toward high-net-worth individuals and commercial clients, prioritizing fee income from wealth management over pure loan volume.
• The Wealth Management Build-Out: This division has become a growth engine, with AUM/AUA climbing to $12.9 billion by Q3 2025. The team focuses on comprehensive financial, tax, and fiduciary advice, not just transactions.
• The 2025 Rebrand: The change to Peapack Private Bank & Trust was more than cosmetic; it signaled a final, public commitment to their niche as a premier boutique private bank in the Metro New York area.

If you want to dig deeper into the current strategic framework, you can review the Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC).

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC) Ownership Structure

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation is a publicly traded bank holding company, meaning its ownership is distributed among a diverse group of institutional and individual investors. This structure ensures a high degree of transparency and regulatory oversight, but it also means no single entity holds a controlling stake, which is typical for a company with a market capitalization of approximately $445.97 million as of November 2025.

Given Company's Current Status

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation is a public entity, trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol PGC. The company officially rebranded its operating bank as Peapack Private Bank & Trust on January 1, 2025, to better reflect its boutique private banking strategy focusing on the New York metropolitan market. This strategic shift aims to secure lower-cost core deposits and improve the net interest margin (NIM), which expanded to 2.77% in the second quarter of 2025. The public status means its financials, including the Q3 2025 revenue of $70.69 million, are regularly disclosed. It's defintely a key point for any investor looking for liquidity and public data access.

Given Company's Ownership Breakdown

The company's ownership is heavily concentrated among institutional investors, which is common for a regional bank holding company. This means large asset managers and mutual funds drive the majority of the trading volume and hold significant influence over strategic decisions. For a deeper look at who's buying, check out Exploring Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Given Company's Leadership

The company is steered by a seasoned executive team and an independent Board of Directors, a structure designed to balance management's operational vision with fiduciary oversight. The average tenure for the management team is over 8 years, providing stability in a changing financial landscape.

Here's the quick math: experienced leadership often means fewer unexpected strategic pivots.

• Douglas L. Kennedy: President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He has been in this role since 2012, driving the shift toward the private banking model in the Metro New York area.
• F. Duffield Meyercord: Chairman of the Board. He also serves as a Partner at Carl Marks Advisors, providing external business expertise to the governance structure.
• Frank A. Cavallaro: Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO). He manages the financial operations, a critical role given the Q3 2025 quarterly revenue of $70.69 million.
• John P. Babcock: Senior Executive Vice President and President of Wealth Management. His division is a key earnings pillar, with Assets Under Management and/or Administration (AUM/AUA) reaching $12.3 billion as of June 30, 2025.
• Gregory M. Smith: Senior Executive Vice President and President of Commercial Banking, focusing on the core lending business, which saw total loans increase to $5.8 billion by Q2 2025.

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC) Mission and Values

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation, which operates as Peapack Private Bank & Trust following its 2025 rebrand, centers its mission on delivering a bespoke, private banking experience to clients in the Metro New York area. This commitment goes beyond simple transactions, focusing instead on long-term relationships, fiduciary trust, and measurable shareholder value.

Given Company's Core Purpose

The company's core purpose is to be the premier boutique private bank, integrating high-touch wealth management with sophisticated commercial and personal banking solutions through a single point of contact. This strategy is a direct response to the need for personalized, expert financial guidance that larger institutions often fail to provide.

Official mission statement

The mission is to deliver exceptional, value-added financial services and tailored solutions to individuals, families, and businesses, fostering enduring relationships built on trust and integrity. This is not just a statement; it's the operating model that drove the Wealth Management Division's fee income to $15.9 million in Q2 2025, representing 23% of total revenue.

Key tenets of the mission include:

• Provide personalized financial solutions to meet unique client needs.
• Ensure ethical conduct and transparent communication.
• Maintain a strong balance sheet for sustainable financial performance.
• Empower employees to defintely excel in a collaborative culture.

You can read more about the cultural DNA here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC).

Vision statement

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation's vision is to become the premier boutique private bank in the Metro New York market, expanding its legacy of client service and financial discipline. The rebranding to Peapack Private Bank & Trust in 2025 underscores this strategic shift toward a holistic, private banking model.

Here's the quick math on execution: the Wealth Management division's Assets Under Management and/or Administration (AUM/AUA) hit $12.3 billion by June 30, 2025, up from $11.9 billion at the end of 2024, showing that the vision is translating into real asset growth.

Given Company slogan/tagline

While the company does not use a single, short slogan in the traditional sense, its positioning is clearly defined by the rebrand and its core service delivery. The new name, Peapack Private Bank & Trust, acts as the primary tagline, emphasizing exclusivity and comprehensive service.

The operational tagline is their commitment to a single point of contact private banking strategy, which is the mechanism for delivering their promise. This approach helped the company achieve a client retention rate of 95% in 2024, which is a strong indicator of successful client focus.

The focus is simple: an unparalleled commitment to client service.

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC) How It Works

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation operates as a boutique private bank, leveraging a high-touch, single point of contact model to integrate commercial banking, personal banking, and wealth management services for high-net-worth individuals and businesses in the New Jersey and Metro New York markets. The company's value creation is driven by growing its loan portfolio, which totaled $6.0 billion as of September 30, 2025, and consistently increasing its fee-based revenue from its wealth management division, which manages $12.9 billion in assets under administration (AUA) as of the same date.

Given Company's Product/Service Portfolio

Given Company's Operational Framework

The core of Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation's operation is its 'private banking' model, which means clients get a single, dedicated relationship manager who coordinates all banking, lending, and wealth services. This structure is designed to deepen client relationships and capture a greater share of their total financial needs.

• Deposit Funding Strategy: Focus on attracting lower-cost core deposits, especially noninterest-bearing demand deposits, to improve the Net Interest Margin (NIM). This strategy helped the NIM improve to 2.81% in Q3 2025.
• Geographic Expansion: Aggressive, strategic expansion into the high-growth Metro New York area, including new production teams and a flagship New York City location, to drive new client relationships and core deposit growth.
• Revenue Diversification: A critical process is the cross-selling of wealth management services to banking clients. This diversification is evident as wealth management fee income contributed a substantial portion of the company's total revenue.

Here's the quick math: The company's total revenue for the trailing twelve months ending September 30, 2025, was approximately $249.05 million, demonstrating consistent growth in its niche.

Given Company's Strategic Advantages

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation's market success hinges on a few distinct advantages that allow it to compete effectively against larger regional and national banks.

• Integrated Private Banking Model: The single-point-of-contact approach provides a highly personalized, 'boutique' service that larger, transactional banks struggle to replicate, fostering client loyalty and deeper relationships.
• Strong Capital and Liquidity: The company maintains a robust financial position, reporting a total available liquidity of $4.6 billion in Q2 2025 and a Company Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio of 10.99%, which is defintely well above regulatory minimums.
• Diversified Fee Income Stream: The substantial and growing wealth management division, with $12.9 billion in AUM/AUA, provides a stable, non-interest-based revenue stream that acts as a buffer against interest rate volatility in the core lending business.
• Targeted Market Expertise: By focusing on the affluent New Jersey and Metro New York markets, the company leverages deep regional knowledge and established community ties to source high-quality commercial and private banking relationships.

To be fair, this expansion strategy comes with elevated operating expenses, which investors must monitor, but the goal is long-term operating leverage. Breaking Down Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC) How It Makes Money

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation, operating as Peapack Private Bank & Trust, primarily makes money through two core channels: the classic banking model of generating net interest income (NII) from loans and securities, and a significant, growing stream of non-interest income from its high-touch wealth management services.

The company's strategy focuses on a private banking model, using a single point of contact to cross-sell commercial lending, deposit gathering, and wealth management, so it captures a larger share of a client's total financial life.

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation's Revenue Breakdown

For the third quarter of 2025 (Q3 2025), Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation reported total revenue (net of interest expense) of approximately $70.7 million, with the majority still driven by traditional lending activities.

Here's the quick math: Net Interest Income was $50.6 million, while Wealth Management Fee Income was $15.8 million, which is a strong, diversified revenue base for a bank of this size.

Business Economics

The core economic fundamental for Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation is the Net Interest Margin (NIM)-the difference between the interest earned on assets (like loans) and the interest paid on liabilities (like deposits). For Q3 2025, the NIM stood at 2.81%, a notable increase from 2.34% a year ago.

This margin expansion is defintely driven by their strategic shift to a private banking model, which prioritizes core relationship deposits over more expensive funding sources.

• Deposit Cost Management: The company's expansion into the Metro New York area is specifically designed to attract lower-cost core deposits, which include noninterest-bearing accounts. This helps keep their cost of funds down, even in a rising rate environment.
• Loan Pricing: Total loans reached $6.02 billion as of September 30, 2025, with a significant focus on Commercial and Industrial (C&I) lending. These commercial loans typically carry higher yields than standard residential mortgages, directly boosting NII.
• Wealth Management Fees: The Wealth Management Division's pricing is based on a percentage of Assets Under Management (AUM) and Assets Under Administration (AUA), which grew by $1.0 billion during the first nine months of 2025 to reach $12.9 billion. This fee-based model provides a valuable, non-cyclical revenue buffer against fluctuations in interest rates.

The firm is actively managing its balance sheet to improve the NIM, but still faces rising operating expenses due to its New York City expansion efforts.

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation's Financial Performance

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation's financial health as of the end of Q3 2025 shows a bank focused on growth and margin improvement, but also managing higher credit risk and operating costs.

• Net Income: Q3 2025 net income was $9.6 million, a significant increase from the $7.6 million reported in the same quarter last year, reflecting strong NII growth.
• Asset Quality: The provision for credit losses rose to $4.8 million in Q3 2025 from $1.2 million a year prior, which is an important metric to watch as it indicates increased credit risk relative to loan growth.
• Capital Strength: The tangible book value per share increased by 7% to $34.10 as of September 30, 2025, demonstrating a strengthening capital position.
• Efficiency: Operating expenses increased to $52.3 million in Q3 2025, up from $44.6 million a year ago, primarily due to costs associated with the strategic Metro New York expansion, which is pressuring the efficiency ratio.

The bank's strategic focus on becoming a premier boutique private bank is delivering deposit and loan growth, but the trade-off is higher near-term operating expenses and provisioning for credit losses. To understand the long-term vision driving these investments, you should review the Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC).

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC) Market Position & Future Outlook

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation, operating as Peapack Private Bank & Trust, is a specialized regional institution that has successfully positioned itself as a boutique private bank, focusing on high-net-worth individuals and commercial clients in the affluent New Jersey and Metro New York markets. The company's future outlook is tied directly to its strategic expansion, which has driven deposit and loan growth, but this growth comes with near-term expense and asset quality risks that demand defintely careful management.

Competitive Landscape

In the highly fragmented New Jersey and New York metropolitan banking sector, Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation competes against both massive national banks and focused regional players. Its competitive edge is its 'single point of contact' private banking model, which contrasts sharply with the broader, transactional services offered by larger institutions.

Opportunities & Challenges

You need to map the next 12-18 months by focusing on where the company can win and where it must defend. The primary opportunity is the continued monetization of the Metro New York expansion, but the core challenge remains managing the cost of that growth against a volatile interest rate environment.

Industry Position

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation is a well-capitalized, growth-focused regional bank with a clear niche. Its Tier 1 Leverage Ratio stood at a strong 8.86% for the company as of September 30, 2025, which is well above regulatory minimums.

The rebranding to Peapack Private Bank & Trust, effective January 1, 2025, solidified the firm's identity as a specialized private banking and wealth management provider, moving away from a traditional community bank model. This specialization is the differentiator. You can dig into the philosophy behind this shift here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corporation (PGC).

• Total Assets reached $7.4 billion as of September 30, 2025, placing it firmly in the mid-tier regional bank category.
• Wealth Management fee income made up approximately 22% of total revenue in Q3 2025, showing the success of the diversified revenue strategy.
• The focus on Commercial and Industrial (C&I) lending is evident, with C&I balances representing 44% of the total loan portfolio at September 30, 2025.

The company is not a market share leader in deposits, but it is a profit-per-client leader in its chosen niche. The goal isn't volume; it's high-touch, profitable relationships.