The Gore-Lieberman presidential campaign is already having an impact on the banking business, by way of a $1 million deposit at Atlanta-based Citizens Trust Bank, the largest African-American-owned bank in the Southeast.
Executives there said the deposit will help $250 million asset-Citizens Trust fund loan requests from small businesses in the region. Citizens is the only African-American-owned bank that has preferred-lender status with the U.S. Small Business Administration.
We will blend the money into our other deposits and put it to work in the community, said James Young, president and chief executive officer of Citizens Trust.
While Citizens has received such temporary deposits from political campaigns before, Mr. Young said this one is by far the largest previous campaigns usually gave $100,000.
This is a vote of confidence for banks like ours that rarely show up on the national radar screen, he said.
Members of Americas Community Bankers are scheduled to elect new board directors and officers Oct. 31 at the groups annual convention in Seattle.
David A. Bochnowski, chairman, president, and chief executive of Peoples Bank in Munster, Ind., is slated to be the chairman.
Curtis L. Hage, chairman, president, and CEO of Home Federal Savings Bank in Sioux Falls, S.D., is expected to be promoted to first vice chairman. D. Russell Taylor, president and CEO of Rahway Savings Institution in Rahway, N.J., is nominated as second vice chairman.
Nominees for the eight new seats on the associations board are: Bruce R. Hostler, chairman and CEO of Reliance Bank in Altoona, Pa.; R. Miles Ledgerwood, president and CEO of Alamogordo Federal Savings and Loan Association in Alamogordo, N.M.; James T. Mann, president and CEO of First Federal Savings Bank in Clarksville, Tenn.; Thomas C. Meuser, chairman and CEO of El Dorado Savings Bank in Placerville, Calif.; Christopher W. Pinkham, president of the Maine Association of Community Banks; William T. Ratliff 3d, chairman and CEO of a family of financial services companies including New South Federal Savings Bank in Birmingham, Ala.; Donna F. Shuler, president and CEO of Independence Federal Savings Bank in Washington; and William R. White, chairman, president, and CEO of Dearborn Federal Savings Bank in Dearborn, Mich.
Jacob A. Frenkel, chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co.s sovereign advisory and global financial institutions groups and vice chairman of Merrill Lynch International, was named chairman and CEO of the Group of Thirty, an international financial advisory group in Washington. Mr. Frenkel succeeds Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Board chairman, who will remain involved with the nonprofit group.
The Group of Thirty also elected four new members: William J. McDonough, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision; Arminio Fraga Neto, governor of the Central Bank of Brazil; Stanley Fischer, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund; and Leszek Balcerowicz, Polands former deputy prime minister and minister of finance.
Paul J. Polking, Bank of Americas executive vice president and general counsel, has been named chairman of the Financial Services Roundtables lawyers council. Mr. Polking succeeds William H. McDavid, general counsel of Chase Manhattan Corp.
The Conference of State Bank Supervisors last week held its fifth annual International Dialogue Day, shepherding 30 foreign bankers and 10 state commissioners around Washington last week.
The group met with officials on Capitol Hill, at the State and Treasury departments, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The highlight, however, was an off-the-record, hourlong get-together with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.
Every year, we call Greenspans office and say, What day is he available? and then we structure the rest of the day around that, CSBS president Neil Milner said. It was an excellent opportunity. We discussed whats going on in the world.
David G. Kroeger, former supervisor of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.s Seattle field office, has been appointed director of Washington states banks division. During his 32 years at the FDIC, Mr. Kroeger also was an instructor at the agencys examiner training center and a member of its examiner-commissioning panel. He is a graduate of the University of Washington and of the Pacific Coast Banking School, and in his spare time is an Olympic-caliber rower. He is expected to start his new post in early November.
The National Credit Union Administrations Dennis Dollar said at an agency board meeting Thursday that it is a sure thing a new community service requirement for community-chartered credit unions will eventually be applied to all federal credit unions. I am as confident of this prediction as I am that New York will win the World Series. (For those of you too busy recently watching the debates between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the Big Apples Mets and Yankees were set to square off Saturday in the first game of the fall classic.)
