Andy Kattos and
the long game
in Huntsville

A for-sale sign is an unglamorous beginning for a bank headquarters. It has neither the ceremony of a board vote nor the satisfying heft of an architectural model. Andy Kattos saw one anyway, and made a call. At the March 2026 groundbreaking for ServisFirst Bank’s new Huntsville home, his successor, Jim Holtkamp, remembered that small act. Twenty years of running a banking operation had come down, for the moment, to noticing what was available on a familiar street.

Kattos was there as the bank’s former regional chief executive. Holtkamp now had the job. Kattos still had a part in the building project. There is something appealingly practical about that arrangement: the title changes, and someone still needs to keep an eye on the construction.

A breakfast with consequences

The earlier beginning involved breakfast in Birmingham in autumn 2005. Tom Broughton arrived in shorts and flip-flops to discuss ServisFirst with Kattos, an established First Commercial banker. Months passed before a second call brought an invitation to help assemble a Huntsville operation. Kattos would have to raise capital, something he had never done.

He went. With David Mathis and Hill Womble on the initial executive team, the Huntsville bank opened in August 2006 after raising $12.5 million locally. Within 18 months, its assets reached $200 million. The breakfast had become a business.

The leap followed a substantial apprenticeship. Kattos had spent 14 years at First Commercial, ultimately as executive vice president and senior lender in commercial lending. He brought the experience of evaluating businesses and working with borrowers to a role that also required building an operation. A new name on the door did not make the work entirely new. It did make him responsible for more of it.

Huntsville, from six weeks old

Kattos was born in Astoria, New York. His family moved to Huntsville when he was six weeks old, in 1969. His father was a physicist working in space and defense, part of the employment that brought families to the city. His own professional life would take a different route through the same place: finance, lending, and the businesses that needed them.

He has described a familiar reversal among people he grew up with. Many once wanted to leave for larger cities; some later returned, drawn by the quality of life and what Huntsville had come to offer. For a banker whose career stayed closely tied to the area, that observation carries a particular resonance. The place people wanted to graduate from had become somewhere they wanted to return to.

His education also connects him to Huntsville. He earned a finance degree at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, graduating in 1992, and later received a diploma from the Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State University. The route combined a local university with further professional banking education. His subsequent work with UAH would keep the relationship going well beyond commencement.

The careers inside the bank

Ask an executive about a legacy and the answer can become an inventory of buildings, acquisitions, and numbers with increasingly ambitious punctuation. Kattos gave a smaller, more revealing answer when asked about his place in the community. He talked about people who had entered banking as tellers or college interns and progressed into officer positions, commercial banking, private banking, and leadership.

That is a useful way to read the personnel announcements around his final year as regional CEO. Individually, they are routine business news. Together, they show the different sorts of experience he valued in the Huntsville team. Credit knowledge mattered. So did experience outside banking, relationships with business owners, and a connection to the community the bank served.

In March 2025, Michael Bishop became an assistant vice president. He had joined ServisFirst in 2022 as a commercial banking officer after more than a decade of business experience. Kattos highlighted that earlier experience as something that helped Bishop serve commercial clients. The promotion followed growth in his portfolio and relationships with business owners. It was a concrete example of a banker bringing a previous working life into the next one.

July brought Caleb Horton as vice president and portfolio manager. A lifelong Huntsville resident with more than 12 years in banking, Horton brought credit underwriting, administration, and financial analysis experience. His work would support commercial lending. In welcoming him, Kattos emphasized both his credit background and his local ties. Understanding a borrower’s figures and understanding the community were presented as complementary qualifications.

Then, in August, private banker Mary Kate Moore joined with experience in legal services and donor relations. Her responsibilities included developing client relationships and providing banking solutions for their financial needs. Kattos’s welcome drew attention to her approach to people and service. The background was different from Horton’s, and the job was different too. A banking team needs more than one kind of useful person.

“Keep it simple.”

Andy Kattos, on his everyday grooming routine

There had been earlier examples. When Kasey Helms was promoted to first vice president and private banking officer in October 2023, Kattos linked her care for clients and their goals to the bank’s development in Huntsville. Helms had joined in 2014 after graduating from Auburn. Her expanded role involved both new business and the personal and business needs of private banking clients. The chronology gave the promotion context: years of work preceded the new title.

A university relationship that continued

UAH recognized Kattos with its College of Business Alumni of Achievement honor in 2020. Its honoree record places his graduation in 1992 and his induction 28 years later. An alumni award is a brief ceremony in a longer relationship. In his case, there was also the work of advising the institution where he had studied.

When UAH’s College of Business celebrated 30 years of accreditation in 2024, it named Kattos among the business leaders serving on the dean’s external advisory board. The group included executives from telecommunications, technology, aerospace, and banking. It is an interesting setting for a commercial lender: a room in which different accounts of what employers need can meet the people preparing students for work.

The college described community partnerships involving scholarships, internships, guest lectures, and class projects. Those were the college’s broader relationships, rather than a list of activities credited individually to Kattos. His documented role was on the advisory board. It placed him within the ongoing discussion between a business school and the professional community around it.

His civic connections extend to other institutions. The National Children’s Advocacy Center listed Andrew “Andy” Kattos on its 2021 board of directors. The University of Alabama also lists him on its Student Life Leadership Council. These roles put his name in settings where the immediate agenda extends beyond a bank’s customers and balance sheet. They belong to the quieter part of an executive biography: meetings, responsibilities, and institutional relationships that rarely produce a ribbon cutting.

Making room for the next chief

On December 2, 2025, ServisFirst announced three Huntsville promotions. Angel Stinson became regional chief operating officer alongside her existing executive vice president and regional chief credit officer responsibilities. Drew Battle advanced to executive vice president. Stuart Whitaker became senior vice president. Kattos praised the three for their dependability and commitment to customers and community.

Less than two weeks later, the bank announced Holtkamp as regional CEO and executive vice president. He had spent nearly 15 years at ServisFirst Huntsville, including as senior lender and manager of sales. Kattos said the two had worked together for more than 20 years. This was a succession between colleagues with a long shared working history.

Kattos continued in an advisory capacity, including membership of the Huntsville Advisory Board, with responsibility for overseeing construction of the new building. ServisFirst now lists him as regional CEO emeritus. The responsibilities make the transition more specific than the title alone: Holtkamp would lead the regional business; Kattos would remain involved with advice and a substantial project.

Four floors, and a view of what comes next

The planned headquarters at 515 Meridian Street North gives that continuing involvement a visible address. ServisFirst describes a four-story downtown building designed for approximately 50 banking professionals. Meeting areas and a large community room are part of the plan, along with a covered rooftop patio overlooking historic downtown and Monte Sano Mountain. Even a bank can appreciate a good view.

Fite Building Company is building the facility, with design by Matheny Goldmon Architecture + Interiors. SSOE Group, PEC Structural Engineering, Schoel, and GTEC are also project partners. The bank’s March announcement put expected completion in 2027. For now, the headquarters remains a construction project and a commitment to future space, rather than a finished chapter.

There is a pleasing fit between that assignment and Kattos’s account of what he enjoys about leadership. People need room to develop; growing teams eventually need room to work. His career has included lending, recruiting, advising a university, and handing responsibility to a longtime colleague. At Meridian Street, the next piece of work is unusually tangible. The former regional CEO has a building to help see through.