Power: It’s Not Easy Being the Greens

Marla and Richard Green were the public face — he the CEO, she the chief marketing officer — of a very private bank.

Firstrust isn’t just any bank; it’s a bank that is run on the guiding principle of keeping it in the family. The Greens — Richard, his father Daniel, and Richard’s brothers Arlin and Benjamin — own virtually every share in Firstrust Savings, the regional bank with more than 20 branches that Richard’s grandfather Samuel founded in 1934. When the Greens converted Firstrust from an S&L to a bank in 1986 and bought out 98 percent of its shares, they called the name of the buyout vehicle “Semperverde” — “Always Green.” There are no SEC filings detailing the Greens’ salaries and bonuses and perks, no independent board of directors or cranky shareholders pressuring them to branch out, grab market share, beef up the bottom line. The Greens are the bottom line. Though the bank’s reported net income was a ho-hum $10.8 million in 2003, court documents filed by Marla Green say Richard reported income “in excess” of $20 million on his tax return.

Naturally, that level of wealth, as well as their social and charitable activities, drew attention to the Greens. But friends and acquaintances of the couple — even those with nothing but kind words for them — almost universally refused to speak on the record for this story. Richard Green, for his part, has filed a motion to seal the records in various cases. But the courtroom battle — which is playing out simultaneously in Philadelphia and Montgomery County courts — has only gotten uglier.

Being married and in business together is a tough line to straddle when things are good — ask Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng, or the owners of your favorite BYOB. But it becomes a cavernous gulf when the marriage goes south. Employees — in the Firstrust case, at least half a dozen — find themselves dragged in. Friends — in the Greens’ case, film czarina Sharon Pinkenson and her husband Joe Weiss, Howard and Lynn Shecter, Jeffrey and Christina Lurie — may be forced to choose sides. Personal interests are weighed against professional ones. And if it’s in a party’s professional interest to see one’s estranged spouse’s reputation dragged through the mud, it may well happen.