After
FFW Protest, Fed Sends Community Bank System 9
Questions, CEO Tryniski Trashes CRA
By Matthew R. Lee
NEW YORK, March 2
– At what point does bank
executives' spin to investors
and the media become more than
misleading? Take Community
Bank System (NYSE: CBU), which
has now received nine
additional questions from the
Federal Reserve on its
proposal to acquire Merchants,
after its CEO
derided issues Fair
Finance Watch raised about the
proposal.
On its
last proposal, CBSI
bad-mouthed a Community
Reinvestment Act protest even
as it had to delay its Oneida
deal. First, CBSI's "Hal
Wentworth said
that Inner City Press is not a
local group and pointed out
that letter was the only one
filed on the Oneida deal. 'This
activist does not do business
with either Oneida or
Community Bank, but
nonetheless made vague
allegations regarding
Community,' Wentworth said. 'These
allegations were entirely
without merit and will be
fully addressed by Community
Bank and Oneida Savings in the
application process.'" Then
the deal was significantly delayed,
with CBSI pushing the date
back.
More
spin: CFO Scott Kingsley
told
the media that FFW's protest
"is not the sole reason. We
have other things that have to
sequentially happen to get to
the technological conversion
in July. When we did not have
a definitive answer from the
Fed or other parties last
week, that put the
technological conversion at
risk, so we opted not to go
ahead.”
This time,
it went to the CEO Mark
Tryniski, who in January 2017
told
stock analysts that
"despite the baseless protest
filed with the Fed Reserve by
a serial activist, we expect
to close in the second"
question. We'll see. Among the
nine questions: "Community
Bank states that, to the
extent it does not intend to
continue to offer certain loan
products and services offered
by Merchants Bank post-merger,
it does not believe that not
offering such products and
services would have a
significant impact on the
target bank's communities. As
an example, Community Bank
cites the fact that Merchants
Bank would no longer accept
applications for FHA/VA loans
(on behalf of a mortgage
company), but that Community
Bank would offer loan products
and programs which are not
currently offered by Merchants
Bank that Community Bank
believes are comparable and
'equally valuable' to its
communities, such as FNMA's
Home Ready Program, Community
Bank's Affordable Housing
Program, and the USDA loan
program. Compare the features
of FHA and VA loans for which
applications are presently
taken by Merchants Bank with
the features of the products
and programs that Community
Bank asserts are comparable,
including any features of FHA
and VA loans that are not
covered by Community Bank's
offerings." Watch this
site.
With
Capital One failing in its
proposal to acquire the
"World's Foremost Bank,"
another bank merger challenged
by Fair Finance Watch failed.
In December it was Astoria's
proposed take over by NY
Community Bancorp, here.
In
January, disparate lender
Investor Bancorp, on which
Fair Finance Watch previously
got a condition imposed saw
its proposal with Bank of
Princeton fall apart.
And now
it's Capital One - Cabela, on
which Inner City Press
commented: "In the New York
City MSA in 2015, the most
recent year for which HMDA
data is available, for
conventional home purchase
loans Capital One denied the
applications of whites 23% of
the time, while denying
African Africans fully 45% of
the time, and Latinos even
more, 46% of the time. This is
unacceptable.
Meanwhile, Capital One
is “closing branches in
Laurel, Gaithersburg,
Frederick and Merrifield.”
Capital One came back with
snark, as has Simmons National
-- but then announced
including to NCRC that
it will withdrawn its
application. Onward.
***
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-303,
UN, NY 10017 USA
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in
the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-2015 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
for
|
,
