‘White Knight’ Emerges for Beleaguered Continental FCU

HOUSTON – At least one eligible suitor has emerged to make a friendly merger offer for Continental FCU, besieged the past four weeks by a hostile takeover bid by credit union giant Wings Financial FCU. Chartway FCU, a $1.5 billion credit union located in Virginia Beach, Va., which has been serving Continental employees for 35 years, said it is willing to acquire the $180 million credit union if–and only if–Contintental’s board and management are amenable. “I’ve talked to (Continental FCU CEO) Tom Glatt a few times in the last few weeks and let him know, if they’re interested, I would be interested,” Ron Burniske, president of Chartway, told The Credit Union Journal yesterday. Chartway, noted Burniske, has emerged as one of the chief rivals to Continental FCU, serving many of the same workers at branches in Newark International Airport, Cleveland and Tampa, Fla., and at the Continental Airlines home of Houston, where Chartway has 10 branches. The Smith Tower, where Continental Airlines has its corporate headquarters, is a beehive of competition, with branches for Bank One, Whitney Bank, Chevron FCU, as well as Chartway FCU and Continental FCU; while Continental Airlines has a corporate relationship, including employee credit cards, with banking giant JP Morgan Chase, explained Burniske, who plans to open an additional 15 Houston branches in the next few years. Prior to Glatt’s hiring last August, Chartway made a formal merger proposal to the Continental FCU board, which was rejected, along with other merger proposals, including one from Wings Financial. “They decided not to do it. So they went out and hired Tom Glatt and we just walked away from it,” saud Burniske. But because of the shared field of membership shared membership, as well as similar internal cultures, Chartway remains interested. “If things keep going the way they’re going, we would be very happy to combine operations,” said Burniske. Chartway was chartered in 1959 as Naval Air Station FCU, but has branched out using more than 800 select groups, as well as vast underserved expansions, targeted specifically at some of the locations it serves Continental employees, like Newark, Tampa, Cleveland, Providence, R.I. and Houston.