Feb. 25--A man-sized gray plastic sea cow stands outside Tom Hawker's Merced home. It holds a white mailbox.

This doorstep sea cow, as he calls it, was just one of many that he used as a calling card of sorts when he was County Bank's chief executive officer for 17 years.

The sea cow sprang from County Bank's trading symbol on the Nasdaq. Capital Corp of the West, which owned County Bank, used CCOW on the exchange. So sea cow seemed an ideal way of marketing.

Today that mascot is all but pointless. County Bank was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. last month, Capital Corp was delisted and Hawker hasn't been County Bank's CEO since he retired in August 2008.

Now he's launched Interim Banker CEO, a service he plans to market to community banks in need of short-term leadership. "I'm not ready to sit with my feet up," he said.

The business plan is that Hawker would come into a bank that has either recently fired its CEO or one where a CEO has fallen ill. Instead of the bank hiring a manager from within or immediately getting a new CEO from outside, Hawker would hold the reins for four to six months while a new leader is found. "You just don't go out and find somebody for next Monday," he said of the process.

Hawker's focus will be with smaller community banks, such as County Bank once was, he said.

So far he has no clients, but has begun calling his contacts in the banking world and has set up two Web sites: interimbankceo.com and bankboardsupport.com.

"This is not the damage-control person," he explained. "Really, the concept is to provide that bridge between the old and the new."

It appears that bridge may be in demand.

A 2003 study on the effects of CEO changeover by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that in most cases, turnover at the top increased volatility no matter the reason for the change. "We find that volatility increases following a CEO turnover, even when the CEO leaves voluntarily and is replaced by someone from inside the firm," the study noted.

That's just what Hawker hopes to reduce.

And the current instability in the banking sector may mean people will need his services even more, he said.

The CEO of Premier Valley Bank, Mike McGowan, agrees. "There's going to be a market," he said. "As you know, there's lots of turmoil in the banking industry right now."

As for the concept of an interim CEO, McGowan has never heard of it, but sees its advantages. Someone from outside any business brings fresh and independent ideas about how to run a company in new ways. They won't get stuck in preconceived notions.

For Hawker, besides marketing himself, the largest road bump he may face will be explaining to clients why the bank he ran for 17 years just went belly-up. "It may take some explanation on my part," he said.

The sea cows won't be much help.

Reporter Jonah Owen Lamb can be reached at (209) 385-2484 or jlamb@mercedsun-star.com.

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