Activist investors ask to join Alabama bank's board

• Key insight: Two activist investors in United Bancorporation of Alabama are asking to join the bank's board of directors, marking an escalation of their demands.
• What's at stake: The two men's businesses own a collective 2% of UBA's shares.
• Expert quote: "Unfortunately, it seems like despite the rhetoric around being thoughtful and shareholder-friendly, we're just not seeing any sort of tangible progress." — Aaron Sallen, UBA investor

Two months ago, a pair of activist investors demanded changes at an Alabama community bank, including one or two new faces on its board of directors. Now they've recommended specific candidates: themselves.

In an open letter to United Bancorporation of Alabama, shareholders Jason Blumberg and Aaron Sallen — whose businesses collectively own about 2% of the bank's shares — asked to join the board as independent directors.

"We possess deep bank investing and advisory expertise that would significantly bolster the Board's capabilities and complement the existing directors' skillsets," Blumberg, the managing member of Blue Hill Advisors, and Sallen, manager of Merion Road Capital Management, wrote on Sept. 8.

Blumberg and Sallen say they arrived at this demand after years of fruitless discussions with UBA, the $1.4 billion-asset parent company of Alabama's United Bank. In a July 7 letter, the two investors went public with their concerns that the bank's excess capital was underutilized, its expenses had "ballooned," and its loan and deposit growth had stagnated.

One day later, UBA issued a statement saying its management and board of directors "value constructive input and dialogue from investors" and are "always willing to evaluate" their ideas. But in the two months that followed, Blumberg and Sallen say, "not a single one" of their concerns was addressed.

"Unfortunately, it seems like despite the rhetoric around being thoughtful and shareholder-friendly, we're just not seeing any sort of tangible progress," Sallen told American Banker.

UBA did not immediately respond Tuesday to American Banker's request for comment. But in an Aug. 5 statement, CEO Michael Vincent discussed one of the activist investors' major concerns: that the bank is sitting on a glut of excess capital.

"Our Board of Directors takes a highly disciplined view of capital allocation that balances returning funds to stockholders, reinvesting in our operations, and being able to act nimbly if and when opportunities arise for inorganic growth," Vincent wrote. "The Board takes very seriously its responsibility to be a good steward of capital and carefully evaluates any potential acquisition to ensure it is truly value-additive and in the best interests of stockholders."

The CEO added that over the past two years, UBA has returned more than $41.6 million to stockholders through stock buybacks and dividends.

Blumberg and Sallen were not satisfied with that response. What they're asking for, they said, is not just a verbal acknowledgement of UBA's problems, but specific plans for solutions, including a timeframe that investors can use to measure the bank's progress. 

"For us, those are just words, and they're really meaningless without a plan," Blumberg said of the bank's statements. "They may touch on the issue, but there's really nothing in terms of a concrete response."

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The question of what to do with UBA's capital stems from a COVID-era cash infusion. In 2022, the bank received $123 million in equity from the U.S. Treasury's Emergency Capital Investment Program, which invested billions in community development financial institutions. UBA, which says it's committed to "fostering economic growth in underserved communities" in Alabama and Florida, is a designated CDFI.

The equity boost resulted in a glut of capital that, in Blumberg's and Sallen's view, has still not been put to good use — which is why they believe the bank could use some new board members.

"To have a business with that much extra capital base, I think, requires thoughtful people to be able to deploy it and run the business properly," Sallen said.

UBA is far from the first bank in recent years to face a revolt from its own investors. Such campaigns have sometimes yielded major changes, and other times they haven't. In July 2025, an activist investor accused Comerica Inc. of "disastrous decisions" and urged the bank to sell itself, which it soon did. That December, the same activist investor called for the ouster of KeyCorp's CEO, which the bank resisted.

In UBA's case, Blumberg and Sallen say that when they first suggested adding new directors to the board, they were not thinking of themselves. But having already studied UBA's challenges, and with their extensive experience in the financial industry — 20 years of professional investing for Sallen, and 15 years in financial services for Blumberg — they believe they have what it takes.

"We sort of gradually came to the conclusion that we've done a lot of work on this, we've had a lot of engagement with the bank," Blumberg said. "Frankly, who better than us to step into those two roles?"