Curmudgeon's Corner

Bank Take-Overs

Posted by Al Campbell on June 13, 2010 | 0 comments

Economy, Political, Quality of Life, U.S., Germantown

We have changed banks again for the fourth time in not-too-many years.  It is not due to lack of good service or competitive offerings.  It is due to the seemingly constant shuffle of owners.

Our banking lives had been content with the then-St. Francis Bank organization.  The people were attentive and soon grew to know our names on sight.  Then, one morning, we awoke to the news that this banking organization had been acquired by the Mid-America Bank group.  That led to the whole name change thing with new signs and new logo-branded clothing for the staffers.

After a seemingly short time span, the next announcement was made and Mid-America was acquired by National City Bank.  Again, there was the change of signage and more new logo-emblazoned clothing for the staffers, most of whom had been there since we began using the bank that lived in that building.

Today we awake to the new-new bank that lives in that building since the PNC organization has finally made the visible change-over of signage and is using this week-end to make all the behind-the-scenes changes so that Monday will bring us the newest bank in our lives.

Of course, there will be the new signage that has been in place for some time now but covered with the old National City logo.  Of course, there will be new logo-branded clothing for the staffers present.  Some of those staff people have been there through all the changes mentioned above.  I’ve joked that they’ll either have to expand their home closets to handle this fourth iteration of clothing, or they’ll have to have a rummage sale to clear some space.

The truly amazing thing, I think, about all this change is just how smoothly and professionally it has been handled.  I am sure this change will be no different.  It is almost beyond my ability to imagine how much behind-the-scenes work has gone into each of these transitions.

Given the topsy-turvy world of commercial banking, however, there seems on ongoing need to have perfected take-overs since the bank examiners are working with some 70 Wisconsin-based banks today that rank as “D” or “E” for strength on a scale from “A” to “E”.  Obviously there are degrees associated with each letter designation; one bank can have a “D+” rating while another can have a “D-“ designation, etc.

The recession, the housing bubble and the market swings have been devastating to many of our community banks.  Some were a bit too aggressive thinking that banks simply were going to never fail again.  Some believed the government would continue to bail them out.  Some of those are, today, working through the issues they helped to create for themselves along with the Congress.  There is still a lot of “bad paper” plaguing many of these banks and that will take time and diligence to work through.  There will very likely be more bank failures and more FDIC-forced take-overs in our near futures.