| After OceanFirst Flushing
Proposal Opposed by Fair Finance
Watch Fed Poses 17 Questions
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
FEDERAL
COURT,
Feb 17 – How automatic
do bank now think merger
approvals are? On December 29,
OceanFirst, which settled
charges of redlining earlier
this decade, announced it will
apply to buy Flushing Bank in
New York.
Fair
Finance Watch has opposed it,
in comments filed January 2
with the Office of teh
Comptroller of the Currency,
and with the Federal Reserve
Board which recently allowed a
$7 billion mega-merger to
proceed with no Fed review.
OceanFirst's record should
preclude this. and this
proposed deal.
In 2024
OceanFirst made 1399 loans to
whites - and only 94 to
African Americans. In
Connecticut, for example, it
made loans only to whites,
none to African
Americans.
In
Pennsylvania its ratio of
loans to whites to loans to
African Americans was 4.5 to
1. In New York, it was 7 to 1.
This proposal is
being opposed along with the
OCC's moves to exclude the
public, and to withhold
documents under FOIA from
Inner City Press and others
until comment periods close.
On February 17
the Fed asked OceanFirst 17
questions,
including "Discuss
in greater detail the due
diligence conducted by
OceanFirst related to Flushing
Bank’s Community Reinvestment
Act (“CRA”) program and how
OceanFirst will ensure
compliance with Community
Reinvestment Act requirements
post-acquisition.Todd Schell
of Warburg Pincus (“WP”) needs
to submit an IBFR for purposes
of processing the instant
application" - filing on
Patreon here
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