The Southwest Ledger

ServisFirst Bank named Cody Cannon executive vice president and Houston market president on August 20. Cannon has more than 25 years of banking experience and will lead ServisFirst's Houston team and its commercial banking relationships in the market. ServisFirst, a commercial bank formed in Alabama in 2005 with offices across the Southeast, opened its first Texas office in Houston in December 2025.

For the Houston commercial banking market, a bank that entered the state less than a year ago and has now named a market president is a newer competitor staffing senior commercial leadership in the city. A Houston market president and the commercial relationships that seat carries are drawn from the same defined pool of experienced bankers that the city's established banks recruit from.

Liberty Capital Bank, the Addison-based community bank founded in 2008 with offices in Addison, Boerne, Cross Plains and San Antonio, added Emily Zoog to its relationship-management team. Zoog brings 26 years of banking experience and was most recently a vice president and business-lending specialist at Huntington Bank in Dallas.

A relationship manager with more than two decades in one market sits at the seat closest to a community bank's operating-company lending and deposit relationships. Experienced Dallas-area relationship managers changing banks is a move the recruiting market follows, because each one is a book of local relationships moving with the banker.

WestStar, the El Paso-based bank, named Lorena Garay a senior vice president and commercial banker on August 4. Garay has more than 20 years of experience in commercial lending and deposit relationship management and will manage the bank's investment real estate client relationships in El Paso.

El Paso is a largely self-contained commercial banking market, where local relationships carry the weight and the pool of senior commercial bankers is small and well known. A senior commercial banker seat filled at one of the market's banks is one fewer available to the banks recruiting for the same profile there.