Dare to suggest that Carver Bancorp's comeback isn't quick enough, and chief executive officer Thomas L. Clark Jr. will give you an earful.
Take, for instance, a local newspaper story that said Carver doesn't lend enough in New York's minority communities.
Mr. Clark's response: "If you think you're going to force us out of business, it's just ridiculous. One day, when we get straight, I'm going to take out a full-page ad: 'Eat your crow.'"
Getting it straight is what Mr. Clark was hired to do for $423.5 million-asset Carver, the parent of Carver Federal Savings Bank and the largest minority-owned financial institution in the country.
The large, bearded man with the booming voice is taking on the thrift's revival with a mixture of bankerly caution and preacherly passion. He'll need both. Carver, one of the most storied minority institutions in the industry, has languished for years.
An 18-year veteran of the New York State Banking Department and former deputy banking commissioner, Mr. Clark, 53, joined Carver two years ago- shortly after its newly issued stock tanked-to embark on what he said was more of a mission than a job.
"You have to watch what you pray for," he said of taking the job at New York's only minority-owned financial institution. "I was restless. The timing was right, and my prayers were answered."
Mr. Clark knows he went to work for no ordinary thrift. Carver, a savings and loan founded by and for Harlem's burgeoning African-American community in 1949, has become almost as much a symbol of its impoverished neighborhood as its famous theaters, restaurants, and nightclubs. It is named for George Washington Carver, the African-American inventor and writer.
"Carver is hope," said Sylvia Woods, owner of Sylvia's, a a local soul food institution and tourist destination. "Just like me. I give people hope it can be done."
Mr. Clark, too, says it can be done, and he is out to prove it to his detractors. Few such newly minted CEOs would have survived the kind of public attacks rained on him and Carver in recent years.
Besides a diatribe in the New York Observer last November that said Carver showed "a black-owned bank can be just as poorly run, with just as little regard for shareholders and customers, as a white-owned one," a flurry of bad press blew up after an investment banker made a half-baked run at taking over Carver last July.
Joseph Curry, a former Bear, Stearns & Co. employee, offered to buy 35% of Carver's stock and was quoted skewering Mr. Clark's management in a New York Times article. The board shot down the offer, and Mr. Curry quietly disappeared from view.
But questions over Carver's future lingered.
Mr. Clark said too much was made of the Curry incident and other takeover talk.
"The point is, Carver is still here," he said. "We've always been."
But some say Carver has "been there" in some ways but not in others.
Many Harlem residents say Carver hasn't been a big lender to the community, according to Marko Nobles, director of public and media relations for the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce.
"The sign is out now," Mr. Clark said. "Carver is lending."
The thrift has created a Small Business Administration loan program, opened several mortgage offices, and hired a marketing specialist to target desirable customers-particularly African-American churches.
To rev up its lending, Carver in the past two years bought about $145 million of adjustable-rate mortgages from Chase Manhattan Bank and Countrywide Home Loans, assets that have a higher yield than the securities that make up the bulk of Carver's assets.
Only 17% of Carver's assets were loans at Dec. 31, 1993. Under Mr. Clark, that ratio had grown to 47% by this March 31. The ratio, however, remains well below the 59% average for all New York thrifts at yearend 1996.
Previously, Mr. Clark said, Carver officials were "trying to nickel and dime" the thrift back to profitability.
Since the mid-1980s, Carver had tended to invest deposits in low- yielding mortgage-backed securities rather than lending the money out. Mr. Clark compared the bank's portfolio to that of a mutual fund.
The conservative strategy dragged down profitability, with return on average equity under 4% and return on average assets below 0.3% the past four years.
Joseph Gladue, a bank analyst at Chapman Co. in Baltimore, said it would be some time before profitability turns upward.
"I'm still optimistic about the bank," he said. "They obviously have a long way to go."
"They still have work to do," said Mr. Nobles, the Chamber of Commerce official. "What they have been working on is getting the message out. But they will become more and more of an option for people in the years to come."
He credited Carver with staying in the neighborhood. Although the bank's reach extends to Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau County on Long Island, its headquarters remained in Harlem.
After its old headquarters burned to the ground in 1992, Carver built a four-story building on the famed Harlem thoroughfare 125th Street.
"We could have been anywhere," said Walter Bond, Carver's chief investment officer. "We wanted to make a statement."
Harlem still struggles as one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods. Signs of urban blight-boarded-up brownstones and litter-strewn lots-still dot the landscape. A dilapidated building sits right next to Carver.
But the aging storefronts are getting such brand-name neighbors as Blockbuster, Foot Locker, and Payless Shoes.
Projects planned for the neighborhood include a new Pathmark supermarket; an entertainment-retail complex being developed by Walt Disney Co.; and a proposed Striver's Center Development Center, a mix of shops and restaurants, Mr. Nobles said.
Development is being spurred by Harlem's designation as a federal empowerment zone, which makes available grants and tax incentives for businesses locating in designated areas.
"This is very raw terrain," said Mr. Bond, the thrift's investment officer. "The reward is high if you can carve out a business; you can do very well. If you can get beyond the perception of crime ... this is raw land where you can develop a business."
Warren W. Traiger, a banking lawyer in New York, said, judging by Mr. Clark's past as a regulator, he is capable of becoming an aggressive lender in the community.
"I know that he has a very strong desire to serve the community-to proudly be the African-American bank in New York City," he said.
The only other African-American-owned bank in New York, Freedom National, closed in 1990. It fell victim to the same lending problems that nearly capsized the industry, while Carver was spared.
Mr. Clark said he knows the trials of being a minority banker. In 1970 he became the first black man to work for Buffalo Savings Bank, where he was assistant treasurer.
He has dreams of one day bringing Carver to Buffalo and other cities with sizable African-American populations. But first things first. New York's neighborhoods still take precedence, and he has his eyes on the Bronx.
"We can be a classy, profitable urban bank," Mr. Clark said. "A lot of banks are looking outside the city, but there are still people in the cities-especially a city as vibrant as New York City."
