Drum roll please. Once again, the Greensboro N&R has scooped the Courier Tribune (so much for Diane Winemuller's emphasis on the "hyper-local"): In what appears to be a Mayberry-style shot-gun marriage arranged by Paw (the Feds) to keep an eye on (and prop up) two bad sisters, Community One Bank has merged with Granite Bank (of Granite Falls, N.C.) - bringing in outside management - with the Carlyle Group and Oak Hill Capital pouring 155 million dollars into the joint venture.
If you read carefully, you'll note that Bank of Granite stock is worth MORE than Community One/FNB. But between the two floundering banks, the stock prices still add up to less than one dollar per share.
Late Afternoon Update: It gets even better.
Thurdsay Morning Update: The N&R has more on the Ponzi scheme. It does puzzle me how a 40 million dollar Ponzi scheme merits only $400,000 in restitution to victims. I knew, based on my own experience, that Randolph Hospital Board member/former FNB CEO, Mike Miller, was deaf, dumb and criminally blind to everything but his own greed. But this blows even my mind.
And if Miller was so "asleep at the switch" (the U.S. Attorney's description - and a common affliction amongst Asheboro's "right people"), why was it so easy for him to hop right on over to become President of Pfieffer University?
Don't our young people deserve better than that?
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6 comments:
Buying 100 shares of FNB United on April 26th at $.26 per share and selling them on April 27th for $.42 per share.....$16.00
Seeing the Courier Tribune "scooped" again...priceless
The new "massa" lives far away from Asheboro, not even an office in the Tar Heel state for either Carlyle Group, or Oak Hill Partners. And, I doubt that their two new overseers will be easily impressed with the change in geography based on their business pedigrees.
My hat is tipped to the Feds. They kept an impending bank failure of not one, but two struggling banks at bay with an arranged marriage of "uglies". This could work, and it beats a bank failure. Still, time will tell how this plays out.
Wonder if J.D. Walker is still having trouble getting anyone to go on record?
Lots of behind-the-scenes conversation on this development.
The Carlyle Group is not doing this because of altruism - the Feds must have promised them heapum big cushion if this deal flops.
As another buddy commented, "The Carlyle group takes no prisoners . . . " (he said a lot more, but it's not printable or remotely politically-correct). I don't expect that business is going to be as usual for "the right folks" who ran FNB into the ground.
The fall-out could be fun to watch.
Whoopsie, Carlyle does have a presence in the Tar Heel state. I didn't scroll down far enough on their web site, they have it listed right between Cairo and Chengdu.
I just got an e-mail, it was a report from a person in the know about Carlyle. They look at the bottom line. I hear axes being sharpened...
Dead wood will be culled to be sure. That could be entertaining.
Timely that you should post, Sir Buzz - so I could respond (I am acutally working on a post about the developments of this week).
A commenter going by the moniker of "Asheboro Citzen" at the Courier Tribune left this ditty on the story about FNB:
"Small-minded. Uninformed. Headline grabbers.
These are all descriptions for the newspaper editors and authors of an article about CommunityOne. I am shocked that our local paper chose to run a story about a two-bit fine (which was obviously negotiated as a condition of the the merger/cash infusion) rather than headline the bigger story of a lifeline opportunity for a local bank that has weathered much adversity over the past several years. Shame on the local fishwrap.
I am neither an investor in, nor an customer of CommunityOne. I am simply frustrated that this paper has joined the ranks of those who spread gossip rather than news."
One at a time:
You wouldn't be an ex-CEO/new University President would you? Or one of his relatives?
I'm actually shocked that the paper didn't ignore the story altogether.
I'm sure that the victims of the Ponzi scheme felt the punishment levied IN LIEU OF AN INDICTMENT was a "two-bit fine".
There are a whole lot of citizens in Asheboro who feel very strongly that this bank did not deserve to get a lifeline.
Finally, there's a whole lot of shame to go around.
We actually agree about the "small-minded", "uninformed", and "fish-wrap" parts.
Oddly enough Doctor Johnson, a mutual acquaintance of ours sent me the comments of this so called "Citizen" of your town. My reply to this was, "It isn't gossip, and it was illegal". And, I didn't spread it, the entire bloody media, both print and electronic, published it as news.....So much the cheerleader from Lake Wobegon this person is. Perhaps it isn't a person at all, perhaps this "Citizen" is an ostrich at the local zoo with its head in the sand.
Sir Buzz, as I said earlier this morning, I don't believe in fairy tales, and it's a fairy tale to style this shot-gun, patch-work, pseudo-repair of a failed bank as "a lifeline opporunity".
I've been saying for a long while that Mike Miller should be in prison, and apparently I was right.
But hey, let's all turn a blind eye as Keith Crisco smooths the way for his pal Mikey to corrupt another generation of young minds.
Of course, both you and I could respond to "AsheboroCitizen" if the stalwart-seekers-of-truth-and-justice (pause to choke/sneer/spit) at the Courier Tribune had not dived behind a paywall and banned both of us because our observations on local culture and character contain just a little too much truth for the right types to handle.
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