| Link Bank
Bid To Buy Partners Bancorp Was Hit by
Fair Finance Watch Now Plan Required
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell
Book
SOUTH BRONX, Oct
7 – Pennsylvania,
Delaware and Virginia are
portrayed as diverse and ever
progressive places. But their
banks, not so much.
Consider
for example the proposed
merger on the rebound between
New York-based Link Bank and
Partners Bancorp, which
recently broke off its
proposed deal with OceanFirst.
Inner City Press
and Fair Finance Watch have
long exposed redlining - and
in this vein, on May 6 they
filed a Community Reinvestment
Act challenge with the FDIC
and Federal Reserve.
Now in
October, the FDIC has required
from LINKBANK a plan to
improve its lending to African
Americans, which Inner City
Press has published on its
DocumentCloud
here.
Fair Finance
Watch has been reviewing
LinkBank including its 2021
HMDA data not taken into
account in any CRA exam and
finds it troubling.
In
Pennsylvania in 2021, Link
Bank made 49 HMDA-reported
loans to whites - and only TWO
to African Americans, worse
that its peers. When one
expands the review to include
loans beyond Pennsylvania,
Link Bank's loans in 2021 to
whites increase to 53, but to
African Americans remains the
same insufficient
TWO.
Virginia
Partners Bank is only slightly
better. In 2021 it made 48
HMDA reported loans and only
THREE to African Americans.
While insufficient, that is
still more than Link Bank's
TWO. A terrible bank would be
acquiring a bad bank, and
making it even worse.
After
Inner City Press' comments
were filed, LINKBANK's outside
counsel Luse Gorman PC by
Agata S. Troy and Benjamin
Azoff rather than addressing
the disparities argued that
they have no merit.. This
should not be countenanced -
rather than conditional
approval - the type of
condition, even mild, that the
Fed refuses to incorporate
much less enforce - Fed
denial is called for.
If the regulators
at the Fed means what they
claim, this application should
be denied. Watch this site.
***
Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a
month helps keep us going and grants you
access to exclusive bonus material on our
Patreon page. Click
here to become a patron.
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
Press Room 480, front cubicle
500 Pearl Street, NY NY 10007 USA
Mail: Box 20047, Dag
Hammarskjold Station NY NY 10017
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 2006-2023 Inner City
Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com
|
,
