FEASTERVILLE, Penn. – Mario Incollingo, who lead the first credit union conversion to stock-owned bank, then swiftly sold the bank in a lucrative deal for insiders, passed away last week at 72. The cause of death was cancer.
Incollingo was CEO of IGA FCU, which he converted to a mutual savings bank in 1998, then made it the first credit union to go public in an IPO just five months later. He sold the ex-credit union to nearby First Penn Bank the following year in a deal that made millions for him and other insiders. A subsequent lawsuit over the First Penn deal showed that Incollingo actually began merger negotiations with First Penn in February 1999, just two months after the conversion to mutual savings bank for the one-time $200 million credit union, and 18 months before the IPO.
Longtime credit union members were mostly left out of the money when IGA became the first ex-credit union to sell stock, before being sold to First Penn, with public records showing only 1,125 depositors took part in the 1999 initial public offering.
The route of IGA FCU, once the credit union for local electric company employees, has become a model for several subsequent conversions to banks.
Incollingo, a former executive at Glenside Savings & Loan, became vice president of IGA FCU in 1988. From to 1992 through 1998 he was its president, chief executive officer, and director. When the converted credit union was acquired by First Penn Bank in 2001, Incollingo became chief operating officer and director before retiring in 2003. Incollingo retired with 57,558 shares in the bank valued at $765,000 and a severance package that paid him $320,000, the proceeds of a company paid life insurance policy, 10,000 stock options valued at $50,000, as well as the Mercedes Benz the company had been leasing for him.
He came out of retirement in February 2007 to serve as president of Colonial American Bank in Horsham, Penn., through October 2008.
