Community banks getting no love in this crisis

Recently, I posted a Wall Street Journal article that suggested smaller banks and new banking enterprise can supply the lion’s share of additional credit needed for the U.S. banking system. While President Obama is off meeting the heads of the big banks, we should keep in mind that there are other institutions out there that

Revisiting regional banks

As you know from reading my blog, I am expecting a lot of writedowns from regional banks as real estate loans sour.

In fact, I expect a number of bankruptcies because of defaults in commercial real estate where much exposure is hidden. Below is a clip of Bain Slack of Keefe Bruyette & Woods, who has a few words to say about the regionals, especially in the Southwest.

Take a look

Nationalized banking predators

As with everything else, the bailout of the U.S. banking system is going to have unintended consequences. One of them seems to be giving exactly those firms that wasted billions of shareholder money a chance to double down. Flush with government money, these busted financial companies may just go on a shopping spree sponsored by

National City sold

PNC, down only 13% this year-to-date, very good for a bank stock, is acquiring beleaguered Ohio bank NCC for $5.5 billion. The price represents a huge discount to the prevailing market price before open today and NCC was down 34% in early trading. PNC is issuing $7.7 billion in stock and warrants to the U.S.

Sovereign Bancorp: Santander looking to buy regional bank

Spanish banking giant Banco Santander has pulled through the credit crisis with a much higher profile than ever before. I was initially skeptical that the firm was hiding huge losses at it had exposure in Spain, the UK and the US, all terrible bubble markets. Yet, it has seemed to come through swimmingly and is

National City gets approval to raise cash

Updated 535PM EST on 16 Sep 2008 to reflect information from this press release:National City Completes $7 Billion Capital Raise While all eyes were focused on Lehman Brothers this weekend, many other players were making their moves to shore up their own balance sheets in order to avoid the critical situation which felled Lehman. Merrill

Brace yourself!

In case you missed it, the financial system in the U.S. is near collapse. This weekend was unbelievable. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The world’s largest insurer AIG is looking for the Fed to help it avoid collapse and Merrill Lynch was forced to close a deal with Bank of America to save it’s own

Regionals options suffer due to accounting rules

Seven years ago, I was involved in a merger that was the last proposed under the old pooling of interests accounting rule that was phased out after June 30, 2001. This methodology was great because it didn’t necessitate acquiring companies to re-mark assets on the companies balance sheets to reflect impairment of intangible assets. Needless

National City Faces `Informal’ Probe Tied to Lending

National City is one of the regionals under the greatest pressure and scrutiny. This Friday afternoon announcement has to make deposit- and shareholders alike very nervous. National City Corp., Ohio’s largest bank, said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission started an informal probe into the company’s lending and the sale of its subprime home unit

What if a large US regional bank goes to the wall?

I fully anticipate this will happen, so the question becomes: what will the Fed do? The FDIC stepped in at two banks over the weekend, 1st National Bank of Nevada and First Heritage Bank. These banks failed as a result of construction loans in real estate bust regions of the US. No, surprise there. This

FDIC steps in at two more failed banks

1st National Bank of Nevada and First Heritage Bank, operating in Nevada, Arizona and California were taken over by the FDIC on Friday. They always wait until Friday night to do their business. This marks the first FDIC closure action since the FDIC closed the much bigger IndyMac. Bad loans to developers and home builders

Too big to fail?

Recently, the SEC restricted short selling on a list of 19 stocks because of turmoil following the Fannie-Freddie worries last week. In effect, the SEC was signaling that these institutions are too big to fail because a number of these companies were not subject to rumors of massive losses while a number of institutions not