For immediate release: Jan. 18, 2007
Leonard Abess, chairman, president and chief executive officer of City National Bank of Florida, in Miami, Walter Banks, president of Lago Mar Resort and Club, in Fort Lauderdale, and Marvin O'Quinn, president of the Public Health Trust of Miami-Dade County and chief executive officer of Jackson Health System, have been appointed to the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Miami Branch. Their terms began Jan. 1, 2007, and run through Dec. 31, 2009.
Abess is chairman, president and chief executive officer of City National Bank of Florida. The Bank was founded in 1946 in Miami Beach and currently has 19 offices in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Abess is a trustee of the University of Miami, where he is also chairman of the finance committee and a member of the executive, investment and medical affairs committees as well as a trustee of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Abess is former chairman of the board of Mount Sinai Medical Center, where he remains a founder and trustee. He is a board member of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, a member of the Orange Bowl Committee, the World Presidents Organization, the Chief Executives Organization and the cabinet and national commission of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. Abess is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Banks is the owner, president and chief executive officer of Lago Mar Resort and Club, which has been in the Banks family for three generations. He has served as president since 1965. Banks has been a developer of both residential and commercial real estate for the past 30 years and a registered real estate broker since the mid-1960s.
Banks serves on the advisory board of Northern Trust Bank, is a board member of Florida Hospitality Mutual Insurance Co., and is a member of the Florida Commission on Tourism and Broward Workshop (past chairman). Banks has an undergraduate degree from the University of Miami and did graduate work at the Hotel School of Cornell University.
O'Quinn has served as president of the Public Health Trust and chief executive officer of Jackson Health System in Miami since 2003. O'Quinn has served on the Governor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Access to Affordable Health Insurance (2003-04), the American Hospitals Association's (AHA) NOVA Award advisory panel, Miami-Dade's Elder Abuse Task Force and the Tri-County Medical Task Force. He serves on the administrative board and nominating committee of the Council of Teaching Hospitals and Health Systems and is also the AHA alternate delegate to the Regional Policy Board for 2006-08. He was also inducted into the Miami-Dade County Public Schools 5,000 Role Models of Excellence Project.
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta branch directors provide economic information from their industry and the branch territory to the district Bank's president and head office directors, who use the information in formulating monetary policy and making discount rate recommendations.
O'Quinn was appointed to the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Miami Branch by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Abess and Banks were appointed to the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Miami Branch by the Atlanta Fed's board of directors. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., appoints three of the directors of the Miami Branch, and the Atlanta head office directors appoint four.