It's not the best time to run a bank. Wachovia ousted chief executive Ken Thompson last week. He joined Stan O'Neal, former CEO of Merrill Lynch, and Charles Prince, former CEO of Citigroup, in the unemployment line for ex-Fortune 500 executives. O'Neal and Prince lost their jobs in the fall.

The nation's largest financial institutions have struggled to contend with the housing- market collapse and related credit crunch. They have shed billions of dollars in market value. Bear Stearns, once a bastion of Wall Street, has disappeared.

"This is a pretty challenging time," said Scott Custer, chief executive of RBC Bank of Raleigh. "I spend more time than not on good ol' bank business."

Custer has steered RBC through treacherous shoals, picking up a few scars -- revenue and profit have declined as the bank deals with bad loans -- but avoiding a wreck that would devastate the company or jeopardize his job.

RBC Bank this year is No. 1 on The News & Observer's Carolinas 100, an annual ranking of the top 100 publicly traded businesses based in North Carolina and South Carolina. It's an unusual spot for a bank, given the current state of the industry.

But RBC is an unusual bank in a state that is also home to industry giants Bank of America and Wachovia. RBC is a subsidiary of a foreign company, Royal Bank of Canada, with a corporate structure that gives Custer, 51, some cushion to weather the downturn.

"There's a substantial financial strength supporting that organization," said Brad Smith, an analyst who follows Royal Bank of Canada for Blackmont Capital in Toronto. Royal Bank is the largest financial institution in Canada and has more than $5 billion in annual profit.

By contrast, RBC is an underdog in the United States with a territory that stretches through only six Southeastern states. It is the fifth-largest bank by deposits in North Carolina.

Custer has worked to expand the brand, orchestrating three acquisitions in the past two years to extend RBC's reach. His most visible effort to boost awareness, at least locally, involved moving the bank's headquarters from Rocky Mount to a new 33-story tower that is reshaping downtown Raleigh's skyline.

That decision -- along with an earlier one by his predecessor to name the RBC Center in west Raleigh -- has raised RBC's prominence and given Custer more cachet. He's showing up on more boards and in more places.

"Their slogan is, 'Let's do something giant,' said Ed Fritsch, the CEO of Highwoods Properties, which owns the downtown tower that will bear RBC's name. "And he's enabled that in many ways. But he hasn't assumed that slogan for himself."

Custer is gaining a bigger platform, Fritsch said, but he's still "grounded in humility."

Knock down obstacles

Ask what he does, and Custer doesn't cloak his answer in jargon.

"When obstacles come up, as they inevitably will, my job is to try to knock those down for people," he said. "If I can help the largest number of people in the company be more successful, then that's going to make us more successful."

His directness can be jarring.

"People have said that I'm abrupt or rude in my e-mails," said Custer. "I'll send a response, it might be one word: 'Yes.' 'No.' 'O.K.' "

He says that it's because he can't type, but also admits "I don't need a stream of conversation."

That attitude speaks to a guiding principle: Caring more about what gets done than how long it takes.

That translates into a banker who doesn't work bankers' hours.

He might start with a breakfast meeting at 7:30 a.m. and finish well after dinner at 10:30 p.m. He travels often: sometimes to Canada to meet with executives from the parent company; or to Alabama, where RBC recently bought another bank; or to locations in the Southeast.

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