M&T Bank has about 1,300 facilities totaling 10 million square feet, spanning 32 states and six countries.
Someone needs to be responsible for all of that real estate. And that person is Keith Belanger.
If anyone at M&T can appreciate the magnitude of the bank’s growth, it is Belanger, a senior executive vice president who heads the corporate services division. In an interview at the bank’s headquarters, he reflected on how comparatively small M&T was when he joined nearly four decades ago.
“If you couldn’t see something from the 19th floor up here, it wasn’t in our marketplace,” Belanger said. “We were just Buffalo.”
That has changed dramatically. Through a slew of acquisitions, M&T has transformed into one of the nation’s largest banks. The bank now has about 22,000 employees, with branches in 12 states and the District of Columbia.
Belanger also oversees other, non-real estate functions that are vital to the bank’s everyday operations. Those include corporate procurement, food services, mail and courier service, records management and corporate security.
Belanger, 69, is retiring at the end of the year. The Lake View resident is wrapping up a career at M&T that began in 1987, just four years after a banker named Robert Wilmers arrived on the scene.
Rich Gold, who retired as M&T’s president and chief operating officer in 2023, called Belanger a “valued adviser” who has made a lasting impact.
“Keith was largely responsible for constructing, growing and operating the physical infrastructure of the bank,” Gold said. “Think about every building, every stick of furniture, every piece of equipment, the transport and safety of every employee. The vast responsibility that he carried on his shoulders was incredible.”
And then there is Belanger’s community involvement.
“Keith followed the Wilmers playbook to the hilt,” Gold said. “He graciously served the community in various capacities, most notably through his involvement in Buffalo Place. Keith was connective tissue − linking the bank and its support to myriad endeavors in the Western New York community.”
Belanger started out on a much different career path. He grew up in Vermont and graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. His seven years of active duty included serving as commanding officer of a Coast Guard cutter.
Belanger went on to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1987. He joined M&T through its Executive Associate Program, starting out as a commercial real estate lender. In 1994, he shifted into corporate services.
Back then, the corporate services team consisted of about 15 employees. Today, that team has about 350 employees.
As M&T bought other banks, Belanger and his team oversaw the task of selling or exiting surplus real estate, like overlapping branches. Those moves ensured the bank maximized the benefit of the acquisitions, by reducing expenses.
With those deals, Belanger also sought to tap into the “Buffalo advantage” of moving non-customer-facing jobs to Buffalo from higher-cost markets when possible.
“When you think about the jobs we’ve created over the past 30-plus years, it’s in large part because we recognized there’s a significant Buffalo advantage,” Belanger said.
M&T is a driving force downtown, between its employees and its signature properties.
The bank recently spent millions of dollars restoring the marble exterior of its iconic headquarters, One M&T Plaza. Down the street, M&T worked with developer Douglas Jemal to revive what is now called Seneca One tower, anchored by the bank’s “tech hub.” M&T deliberately kept part of its tech hub at Lafayette Court, so as not to create a big office space vacancy in the middle of Main Street. M&T also has made improvements to the shimmering roof of the former Goldome building, known as One M&T Center.
Tracy Woodrow, M&T’s chief administrative officer and Western New York regional president, said M&T has an array of properties that require care and upkeep, to ensure they are suitable for employees and project the right image.
“It’s a daily, meticulous grind to make that happen,” she said. “What Keith has done is assemble a team of people who are passionate about that. If you get a tour of one of our buildings from one of our engineers, they know every square inch of it.”
That attention to detail − including the outside of M&T properties, such as green space, trees and fountains − shows “a real commitment to being a space that we can be proud of and the City of Buffalo can be proud of,” Woodrow said.
During Wilmers’ tenure as CEO, Belanger with him met every other week for about 30 years. Standing in Wilmers’ former office, Belanger can still picture precisely where the desk was situated.
Even before they started meeting regularly, Belanger learned from Wilmers how to be concise in his presentations.
“If I showed up with two pages, he challenged me to make it two paragraphs,” Belanger said. “If I showed up with two paragraphs, he challenged me to make it two sentences.”
Wilmers also encouraged Belanger to get involved in the community. Since the late 1990s, Belanger has served as chairman of Buffalo Place, the downtown improvement district. From that vantage point, he has watched downtown transform over the decades.
“It’s come a long, long way, and going into Covid, it was on this great trajectory, and we kind of had our legs knocked out from under us, and then just kind of treading water,” Belanger said. “Eventually, we’ll see some of this overhanging office space getting converted.”
Belanger is also chair of the Ralph Wilson Park Conservancy board and was honorary committee co-chair of the recent World Canal Conference, among many other community roles he has held.
After Woodrow joined M&T in 2013, she came to see just how extensive Belanger’s community involvement was, in both a formal and informal way.
“When something’s going on in downtown Buffalo, his phone always rings, whether it’s for advice, or for help, or for connections,” Woodrow said.
As he prepares to retire, Belanger said he will miss his colleagues but is grateful for the opportunity he has had at M&T all these years.
“If you were to look at the number of banks that existed back then versus today, it’s just a fraction of the banks that still exist,” he said. “Certainly, this was the right wagon to get hitched to.”
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The Buffalo Next team gives you the big picture on the region’s economic revitalization. Email tips to buffalonext@buffnews.com or reach Buffalo Next Editor David Robinson at 716-849-4435.
Email tips to buffalonext@buffnews.com.
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