-
To close on a $36.4 million injection from Priam Capital Fund I LP, 1st Mariner Bancorp must raise another $123.6 million — and part ways with Edwin Hale Sr., the company's founder, chairman and chief executive.
April 21
The board of 1st Mariner Bancorp (FMAR) has withdrawn from a long delayed securities purchase agreement with a New York investment firm that would have injected badly needed capital into the Baltimore company.
Under the April 2011 agreement, Priam Capital Fund I
Circumstances have changed for 1st Mariner since it entered the agreement and the board "believed it was in the best interest of the company to withdraw from the agreement at this time," Mark A. Keidel, 1st Mariner's chief executive, said in a news release Friday.
The company has improved its results, reporting three straight quarters of profits and earning $15.4 million for the first nine months of the year. For the same period last year it lost $26.3 million.
The company has focused on
Still, 1st Mariner reported in its third-quarter results that its capital ratios, although improved, were still below regulatory requirements. At Sept. 30, 1st Mariner Bank's total-risk based capital ratio was 7.1% and its leverage capital ratio was 4.1%.
As part of the deal with Priam, Edwin F. Hale Sr. had