First you begin with a bang:
"Union’s bank is set to go public; $64m in funding expected to be raised" by Deirdre Fernandes | Globe Staff November 04, 2014
A community bank started by the local carpenters union is turning to Wall Street for help as it struggles to comply with new regulations put in place since the financial crisis.
Ow! Just hit my thumb!
The Boston institution formerly known as First Trade Union Bank is expected to launch its initial public offering this week, a move aimed at getting the bank’s primary owners, the New England and New York carpenters’ pension funds, out of the banking business.
Probably a good idea, I gue$$.
The stock offering is expected to raise about $64 million, with more than three-quarters of the proceeds going to the New England Carpenters pension and annuity funds and the Empire State Carpenters Pension Fund.
The remainder of the proceeds would be invested in the bank.
The bank has also changed its name to Radius Bank. It will maintain two branches — one in Boston, one in New York — while providing most of its services online.
What about the hacking?
The transformation of the 30-year-old institution was triggered by financial reforms designed to curb the speculative investments by banks that contributed to the recent economic crisis. The Dodd-Frank Act requires a firewall between an institution’s traditional banking practice and its trading and investment activities.
Except none of those regulations are yet in place.
Since the New England and New York carpenters’ pension funds own a majority stake in the bank, they are barred from engaging in investments that are common among pension funds, such as in private equity and real estate, said Mark Erlich, executive secretary for the New England Regional Council of Carpenters and chairman of the pension fund.
You know, all the bundled crap they sold you the last time.
“The last bank that Dodd-Frank was designed to impact was First Trade Union Bank,” Erlich said. “As is always the case in any kind of legislation, there are unintended consequences.”
What a nothing failure that law was. Meant to make it look like they were doing something while continuously bowing to bankers.
The Massachusetts carpenters union started the bank in 1987, using its pension funds, with the expectation the bank would help finance projects that used union labor. The bank also holds the deposits of pension funds and counts carpenter union members as its customers.
At the bank’s opening, carpenters walked out with T-shirts that boasted “Be nice to me I own a bank.”
“It was a source of a lot of pride for a lot of carpenters,” Erlich said.
Just been $tripped.
But the $703 million bank has struggled in recent years. It was heavily invested in commercial real estate when the economic crisis hit and property values dropped, but Radius has invested in mobile payments, including LevelUp, which was launched by a Cambridge start-up. The bank sees potential to grow by appealing to young adults, who are more familiar with mobile technology, Mike Butler, Radius’s president, told potential investors recently.
Yeah, just breeze past those bad mortgage-backed securities that made Wall Street rich.
Radius also plans to expand its niche lending, such as providing financing for luxury yacht owners, Butler said.
Why not? The whole society is designed for them, as is the the paper I read every day.
“We believe that low-cost infrastructure without the burden of branches and without the requirement to build branches in the future creates the model for community banking in the future,” he said.
You got a yacht, reader?
With the improving economy, 2014 has turned out to be a busy year for public offerings of stock by banks, with 14 so far, more than triple last year’s count, said Kathleen Smith, a principal with the IPO fund manager Renaissance Capital. Citizens Bank recently raised $3 billion in an IPO that sold about a quarter of the bank’s shares to the public, the first round of stock offerings as Citizens’ British parent, Royal Bank of Scotland, spins off its US subsidiary.
Related: Citizens says profit rose 31 percent in 3rd quarter
Still, many bank shares have sold at a discount, in part because investors are not certain when basement-low interest rates will rise, which would help boost banks’ profit margins, Smith said....
And they are already making record profits.
--more--"
The IPO bit, btw, is nothing more than a $ucker's bet to draw dough into the stock market to keep that mother inflated to wealthy fortunes can be made.
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Wayfair stock slumps after quarterly results disappoint
Wayfair shares soar on first day of public trading
Nofair.
