Not content to wait for the news to get around, Princeton, N.J.-based Carnegie Bancorp trumpeted in a press release Jan. 3 it was "pleased to announce" that brokerage firm Janney Montgomery Scott Inc. had issued a "buy" recommendation for the company's stock.
And as if such an announcement by a bank weren't unusual enough, Carnegie was considerate enough to enclose a copy of the Dec. 15 report with the announcement.
"I probably would have taken a very soft approach to it had it been either a 'hold' or 'sell,' but with a 'buy' recommendation, we wanted to tell as many people as we could," said Thomas L. Gray Jr., president and chief executive. "We're very proud of that."
Janney concluded that Carnegie's small-business and professional niche in New Jersey, coupled with its pending merger of equals with Regent Bancshares, Philadelphia, makes it a "solid investment opportunity," the press release said.
Jacqueline Reeves, the Janney vice president who wrote the report, said she hadn't heard about Carnegie's press release.
She described it as "unusual."
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Don't bash Commercial National Bank of Chicago, even in the most oblique way. The bank's loan officers will find out, and they won't take kindly to it.
The Wall Street Journal published an article Dec. 22 that in part delineated the differences between Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, star players for the National Basketball Association's Chicago Bulls.
The article quoted one fan as saying: "MJ (Mr. Jordan) is like Fort Knox. Pip is like a bank at Lawrence and Western."
John M. Barkidjija, a commercial loan officer at $410 million-asset Commercial National, took umbrage. Mr. Barkidjija happens to work at Lawrence and Western.
He fired off a letter to the Journal, which it published Jan. 18.
"Commercial National Bank is an aggressive, hardworking community bank that strives to satisfy its customers," Mr. Barkidjija wrote. "We believe that the quoted fan, by comparing Scottie Pippen to Commercial National Bank, intended to favorably reflect on Scottie Pippen's hardworking and effective basketball playing."
