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Pulaski Financial Corp. late Saturday announced that two former Roosevelt Financial Group Inc. executives will take the roles of chairman and chief executive of the Creve Coeur-based parent of Pulaski Bank.

The company said that on May 1, Gary W. Douglass, the former executive vice president and chief financial officer of Roosevelt Financial, will succeed William A. Donius as president and chief executive officer. Pulaski also announced that Stanley Bradshaw, the former chairman, president and chief executive of Roosevelt Financial, will replace Lee Wielansky as chairman of the board on May 1.

Donius will continue to serve as both a consultant to and a director of the holding company and has agreed to serve as chairman of the bank’s board. Wielansky will take the role of vice chairman of the board of the holding company..

Douglass was with Roosevelt Financial, the Chesterfield-based parent of Roosevelt Bank, when it merged with St. Louis-based Mercantile Bancorporation Inc. in 1997. Mercantile was acquired by Firstar Corp., now known as U.S. Bancorp, in 1999.

Douglass most recently served as chief financial officer of CPI Corp., the St. Louis-based operator of portrait studios in Sears and Wal-Mart stores.

Douglass, who also will be appointed to Pulaski Financial’s board of directors, is a certified public accountant and a former partner with Deloitte, where he headed that firm’s financial institutions practice in St. Louis.

Bradshaw was with Roosevelt Financial when it merged with Mercantile. During Bradshaw’s tenure as CEO of Roosevelt from 1991 to 1997, Roosevelt’s assets quadrupled while the value of its stock grew 18-fold. Bradshaw has been an advisor to Pulaski since 1999, and a member of its holding company’s board since 2006, in addition to serving as the Chairman of the Board of an investment company he launched in late December 1998 no fax payday advances http://payday-badcredit.com. He is also the founding chairman of the board of Square 1 Financial, the holding company of Square 1 Bank, a $1 billion nationwide bank serving emerging growth companies in the areas of technology and the life sciences.

For Donius, his departure not only ends his tenure as leader of the bank but also a long family affiliation with the bank. His grandfather opened the first Pulaski Bank in 1922. He named the bank after General Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman and hero of the American Revolution.

“I am very proud of the incredible team and corresponding results we accomplished over the past 16 years at the bank and my past ten as CEO. I am honored to have followed both my father, Walter Donius, and grandfather, Michael Burdzy, who built the bank over the 70 years before me," Donius said in a statement. "During my tenure, our capital grew 10-fold, our total assets 8-fold and our branch footprint from four locations to twelve while driving shareholder returns of more than 500 percent since our initial public offering in December 1998, while building one of the fastest growing banks in St. Louis in residential lending and commercial and retail banking. I look forward to continuing to serve Pulaski in my new roles.”

Pulaski Financial also reported that its net income for the second quarter, which ended March 31, rose to $2.5 million, or $0.25 per share, compared with earnings of $2.2 million, or $0.21 per share, for the same quarter a year earlier.

For more on Pulaski Financial’s quarterly results, click here.

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