| Home BancShares
Tennessee Proposal Opposed by
FFW St Louis Fed Chides
Bank Giving CSI
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
FEDERAL
COURT,
Feb 3 – Home BancShares,
whose Centennial Bank has a
disparate lending record in
all five states it it is,
including an office in New
York, as applied to the
Federal Reserve to buy a bank
in Tennessee, Mountain
Commerce.
Fair
Finance Watch has opposed it,
in comments filed January 19
with the Federal Reserve Bank
of St. Louis and the Federal
Reserve Board which recently
allowed a $7 billion
mega-merger to proceed with no
Fed review. From the comment:
Fair
Finance Watch has been
monitoring Home BancShares and
its Centennial Bank and finds
that in Arkansas in 2024
Centennial made 870 mortgage
loans to whites while denying
only 242 applications from
whites, while making only 64
loans to African Americans and
denying fully 48 applications
from African
Americans.
This is disparate - and note
Centennial's significant
decrease in loans to African
Americans in Arkansas, from
113 loans to African Americans
in 2020 to only 64 in 2024.
Now they want to go into
Tennessee - FFW is filing
opposition and requesting
hearings.
Likewise
in Florida in 2024 Centennial
made 406 mortgage loans to
whites while denying only 146
applications from whites,
while making only 23 loans to
African Americans and denying
fully 27 applications from
African Americans - that is,
more than its loans to African
Americans. This is extremely
disparate - this application
should be denied.
In Alabama
in 2024 Centennial made 20
mortgage loans to whites while
denying only 11 applications
from whites, while making only
ONE loan to an African
American - extremely
disparate.
In Texas
in 2024 Centennial made 477
mortgage loans to whites while
denying only 151 applications
from whites, while making only
14 loans to African Americans
and denying fully 12
applications from African
Americans. This again is
extremely disparate; the
proposal should be denied to
prevent these patterns from
being imposed on
Tennessee.
There are extensive consumer
complaints against Home's
Centennial Bank. Since the
Federal Reserve Board now
appears dismissive of
complaint based on the
platform on which they appear,
here for the record is a
sample complaint from the CFPB
site...
On January 20 the
St. Louis Fed's Senior
Manager Mergers &
Acquisitions emailed FFW:
"Receipt confirmed."
Home BancShares
responses emphasized that FFW
(and Inner City Press) are
"domiciled" in New York. And?
The Fed asked
Home BancShares: "Section 4.5
of the Agreement and Plan of
Merger includes a
representation by Bancshares
that Bancshares and its
subsidiaries are not subject
to certain non-public
enforcement actions. A
representation of this kind
constitutes an impermissible
disclosure of the Board of
Governors of the Federal
Reserve System’s (the “Board”)
confidential supervisory
information (“CSI”). Please
confirm Bancshares (1) will
not make further disclosures
of CSI to Mountain Commerce
Bancorp, Inc., and (2) will
forbear enforcement of any
provision of the Agreement and
Plan of Merger that would
require Mountain Commerce
Bancorp Inc., to disclose CSI
to Bancshares."
If Home
BancShares is already
violating the Fed's rules,
according to the Fed, what
about the rest of the merger?
Watch this site.
***
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