Somewhere along a salmon-run river on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, Frank Bonetto raised his rifle and coolly fired a warning shot over the head of an approaching grizzly bear. Bonetto is a serious man who's seldom caught off guard. He's also vice chairman of San Francisco-based Bank of the West, a bank with 460 locations in 16 states and assets of $39 billion that, coincidentally, uses a bear as its logo.

So it's no wonder that Bonetto demands unwavering performance from his technology and people, too. Bank of the West's top IT executive is Donald Ward, senior executive vice president and Operations and Systems Group head. The two men are responsible for setting the technology direction for a banking operation growing rapidly through acquisitions.

Bank of the West, which had rev-enue of $1.7 billion last year, acquired Community First Bankshares Inc. of Union City, Tenn., and USBD Bancorp of Stockton, Calif., last year. The deals were valued, respectively, at $1.2 billion and $245 million and increased assets by a third while growing the bank's geographic footprint by 60%.