Update: With PNC's Meterchick, Continental veterans run Philly banking

(see NEW comments from Jim Lynch below) Joseph G. Meterchick, a Port Richmond native, said he's glad to be moving from Bradenton, Fla. back to Philadelphia to help fund "the growth and continued resurgence of my hometown," after PNC Bank named him regional president for Philadelphia, Delaware and Southern New Jersey.

Meterchick replaces Paula Fryland as the local face of Pennsylvania's largest bank. Fryland, a New Jersey native who held the job for a year and a half after replacing long-serving Bill Mills, is retiring and moving West.

PNC, based in Pittsburgh, is the largest bank based in Pennsylvania and rivals TD and Citizens as the second-largest in the Philadelphia area (ranked by deposits), after local-market leader Wells Fargo & Co.

Meterchick joined what's now PNC in the early 1980s, and rose to head the corporate banking team, as well as capital markets and business lending groups, before he was sent to run PNC's western Florida market in 2011.   He's a trustee of the University of Tampa.

"That makes four  former Continental Bank trainees from the 80s (who are now) local CEOs and Presidents," Lynch adds, noting Gerry Cuddy at Beneficial; Tim Abell at Firstrust; and "Scotty" Gamble at BB&T's newly acquired Philadelphia-area operations, besides Meterchick.

"Add Chuck Greenberg , head of Commercial Banking for BofA; Brian Vessey , head of Commercial Banking at PNC; and Mike Dinda , head of Commercial Banking and Real Estate at Firstrust, and  it"s a pretty impressive group," Lynch said, noting it's a sampling and not a complete list.

"They all came to Continental when Roy Peraino was CEO" and Lynch was his deputy, "with major responsibility for  who we hired.  Roy would be proud." Lynch is.