JPMorgan Chase will be rolling out the red carpet uptown next week to tout its growing commercial lending team in Charlotte and celebrate its move into the Hearst Tower -- right in Bank of America's backyard.
The open house Wednesday will be at the Foundation for the Carolinas building , just a few steps from Bank of America's headquarters. Gov. Pat McCrory and state commerce secretary Sharon Decker are scheduled to be in attendance, along with a number of local business executives.
They’ll be celebrating the move a day after JPMorgan Chase’s annual meeting.
The bank has been under pressure to split its CEO and board chairman role, both
now held by Jamie Dimon. Dimon himself has been under fire since the bank
disclosed a $6 billion trading loss attributed to the so-called “London
Whale.”
The New York bank has built its commercial lending team in Charlotte, which lends to businesses with more than $20 million in annual sale, significantly over the past two years. In August, JPMorgan Chase expanded the group from three members to eight. Two of them came from Bank of America, the rest from other parts of the bank.
Since then, Chase has added to the team and now has 15 bankers in the Charlotte group, a spokeswoman said. It's now moving into space in the 46-story Hearst Tower on Tryon Street.
The bank's Charlotte activities will continue Thursday, when JPMorgan is sponsoring a panel discussion on Charlotte's place in the global economy hosted by the Charlotte Business Journal at the Ritz-Carlton uptown.
Former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, who's now a senior adviser at JPMorgan, is scheduled to give the keynote speech.
Friday, May 17, 2013
JPMorgan Chase to celebrate commercial lending team's move uptown
Action NC calls for principal reduction outside BofA headquarters
About 20 activists with progressive group Action NC rallied outside Bank of America's headquarters uptown Friday morning, calling for more principal reduction to delinquent homeowners underwater on their mortgages.
The group also released a report that estimates Charlotte families lost more than $1 billion in wealth through foreclosures in 2012. The brunt, the group says, has been borne by minority communities.
Here's community organizer Luis Rodriguez:
Later, Action NC regular Silvia Sanchez of Charlotte told her story of finally getting a loan modification with principal reduction from Bank of America, which she said allowed her to stay in her home:
The group also spoke in support of U.S. Rep. Mel Watt's nomination to be the new head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The Charlotte Democrat still must be confirmed. Here's Action NC executive director Pat McCoy with a recap of why the group was out on Friday, and thoughts on Watt:
At grand opening, Grameen America in Charlotte touts 300 borrowers
In just its first five months in Charlotte, microfinance nonprofit Grameen America says it has helped 300 people launch businesses that could lift them out of poverty.
In December, Grameen America gave out the first five loans from its new Charlotte branch, in Grameen's signature increments of $1,000 to $1,500.
Through this week, nonprofit leaders say it's lent more than $300,000. The money goes to buy a commercial sewing machine, for example, or to secure a chair at a hair styling salon. Food and catering businesses are also popular.
The nonprofit's staff at the International House on Central Avenue has also added three loan officers, with plans to grow to 10. Ultimately, Grameen hopes to have up to 4,500 borrowers in its first five years.
The organization celebrated its early success and formally launched its Charlotte office at a grand opening ceremony Thursday evening at Packard Place. The nonprofit's CEO, Stephen Vogel, was in town.
"With 300 borrowers in less than six months, Grameen America has demonstrated that there is unprecedented demand in Charlotte for microloans," he said in a statement. "Over the next few years we hope to reach every low-income woman in Charlotte with an entrepreneurial dream."
Here's an interview the Charlotte Chamber did with Grameen America CEO Stephen Vogel:
Thursday, May 16, 2013
PNC's western NC president on the bank's first year in Charlotte
It’s been a little more than a year since Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group entered Charlotte by acquiring RBC Bank’s Raleigh-based U.S. business.
The anniversary of the deal was in March. In September, PNC hired Weston Andress to oversee the bank’s western North Carolina operation, which is composed of 57 branches, including 17 in the Charlotte area.
On Wednesday, in an interview with the Observer, Andress talked about PNC’s progress in the Charlotte area over the past year and the bank’s plans for the coming months, including where it is considering opening branches. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., PNC is No. 10 in the city of Charlotte when ranked by deposits.
One of the bank’s focuses has been building a wealth-management business in western North Carolina. RBC’s wealth-management operation was not part of the sale.
Andress said that, since the bank set foot in western North Carolina, the past year or so has "been as good as or better than we would have expected.”
But in a market flush with banks, PNC’s aware of the challenge.
“As you would have imagine, the competition is fierce, to say the least,” Andress said.
Below are edited excerpts from the interview:
On PNC’s initial focus since entering the western North Carolina market
Initially, given the lack of (PNC) branches and the lack of a retail network here, our business and focus has really been on the commercial and corporate sector. It’ll be nice when we have some more branches, because that’s additional advertising. But … the retail (banking industry) ... is really not very profitable, if profitable at all, right now.
We’re making much more headway on the commercial and the corporate and our wealth-management business, areas where we lend money but there’s also a heavy dose of sort of fee generation or fee services that … can increase our return. RBC had a very strong commercial banking business, and what we’ve tried to do is increase that to a scale that is more proportional to what PNC is used to and the kind of business we want to have here. We’ve also brought in a number of commercial corporate bankers to service our larger, middle-bank-market customers. That business is really well; you don’t go out and take customers away from what is some very good competition out there on a daily basis, but we’ve had our share of wins there.
On plans to add more branches in Charlotte
We expect to build some more. That’ll take time, and those branches that we do decide to build may not be the full-fledged branches that you see out there. They could take a different shape or form; all that’s still very much under consideration. You would have full-service branches and then maybe some other minibranches with interactive capabilities so that you can talk to somebody in the mortgage department or talk to a specialist in a particular area.
We’re looking right now at a number of different locations in areas around Charlotte, certainly south Charlotte, which would be a primary growth area, but in other areas as well. South Charlotte, obviously, is where the growth is for now.
On PNC’s role in giving back to the community
We’re very community-oriented, which to Charlotte, if you’re not community-oriented, you can forget about it. PNC is a do-the-right-thing company. We have an (early childhood) initiative called Grow Up Great: The company has a commitment of $300 million, over a 10-year period, to contribute in the various markets around the country.
What we do in the community is well beyond that: We’ve given to the arts. We’ve given to community development. Just this year we’ve given away $1 million to various groups.
It’s hard to say, from a dollars perspective, that we are going to be a rival to BofA or Wells Fargo here. That’s a difficult proposition from where we sit. What we’re going to do is pick out certain areas where we can be very involved and play a meaningful role. Obviously, we want to be recognized and get our name out there, as BofA or Wells or anybody else would. We gave half a million dollars last year to Discovery Place, Community School of the Arts and the Bethlehem Center. We’re involved with most of the arts groups, whether it’s the Mint Museum or the Bechtler. That really puts us more in the position, I would say, of sponsoring programs and exhibits versus building buildings.
On whether there’s room for more super-regional banks in Charlotte
We think there’s room for us. Charlotte’s economy is growing. It’s not growing as fast as we might like. It still has a high unemployment rate. Part of that’s because people keep moving here. The job growth hasn’t kept up with all the people that continue to move here. We feel like this is a market … (that’s) very community- or philanthropically oriented, and that’s the kind of bank that PNC is. There’s clearly a role for another big bank, and maybe more, to step in and play meaningful roles in the community.
On building a wealth-management business in western North Carolina
We’ve built out a team, led by a guy by the name of Mike York, who had been at Wells Fargo wealth management. And he now has a full team in place of 12 or 13 people. We are slowly but surely – not really that slowly – building that business. The lending side of it comes a little faster than the asset-management side and some of the other sides of the business. We are introducing that to our existing customer base – commercial and corporate executives – as well as using some relationships we have that are really not part of our customer base right now.
We also have a (family wealth) group called the Hawthorn group … and there are a number of well-known families in this area that that group does business with. It’s not as if we’re starting up this thing from scratch. It’s a matter of taking what’s been successful elsewhere and growing it in this market. It’ll take time, but we’re going to get there.
On advertising plans
You’re likely to see more of that, rather than less advertising. We won’t sustain this forever. But certainly we’re trying to build momentum, and we’ve got some momentum. We’re trying to sustain that, for sure. The more branding, the better.
On PNC’s value proposition to corporate clients
It’s not price. Today competition is fierce, and loans are priced very aggressively. I would say that we are competing on service. We think we’ve got some of the best people in the business focused on the middle-market sector of the market. We’re trying to grow a middle-market commercial and corporate banking business. We’re aggressively trying to grow this franchise. So, our argument is they’re going to get more attention from us than they certainly would from one of the bigger guys.
We have spent the technology dollars on things, like treasury management, that some of the big guys have. But we have the decision-making and the focus that you would get from maybe one of the community bank competitors here. Our value proposition is we’re sort of the best of both worlds: a community-oriented bank with support from a very big parent that is aggressively trying to make this work. And, again, so far, so good.
On PNC in general
This is a company that’s been around for 160 years and really is about the size today of NationsBank and Wachovia and First Union back in the 1990s, almost in the heyday of Charlotte banking, when those institutions still had real cultures, personalities. There are a lot of personalities within PNC. Our recently retired CEO, Jim Rohr, who now is the chairman, really sort of established this culture. It seems that Bill Demchak is following in his footsteps and plans to keep a lot of that.
That’s what we’re trying to do in this market: We’re trying to take that type of culture and focus solely on the banking business. We don’t have aspirations to be out in the equity business or the bond business in a huge way. We do have some capital markets operations in the bond area. But we’re not going to go out and buy an investment bank, in all likelihood.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
NewBridge Bank unwinds from federal bailout
Greensboro-based NewBridge Bank said Wednesday it has taken the final step to unwind from the federal financial crisis-era bailout program.
A month ago, the bank's $52 million preferred stock investment from the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program was sold at auction. NewBridge has now spent $7.8 million to repurchase the warrant the U.S. Treasury held to buy common stock in the bank.
North Carolina banks with bailout investments still on their books have been paying them back or seeing them auctioned to private investors at a rapid clip since the Treasury said it wanted to get out of the program last year.
NewDominion Bank rolls out mobile check deposits
Charlotte-based NewDominion Bank announced Wednesday that its business customers will now be able to deposit checks using their smartphones.
Individual customers have had access to the popular technology since last year. A number of the larger banks, like Bank of America, Wells Fargo and BB&T, have rolled out the service over the past year as well.
Essentially, you take a photo of the front and back of your check using a smartphone app to deposit the money.
In NewDominion's business offering, multiple users will have the ability to deposit checks to a bank account. Any deposits before 5 p.m. will be processed for the next business day.
Wells Fargo bests Bank of America on mobile-banking scorecard
Wells Fargo's mobile banking experience scores higher than Bank of America's, according to a ranking, released Wednesday, of 15 major banks.
JPMorgan Chase topped them all, though, on the spring scorecard produced by San Mateo, Calif.-based Keynote, which launched the rankings in 2011. Chase has come in at No. 1 for three years in a row.
Banks were evaluated based on five modes: text, mobile Web and iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps. Of the modes, BB&T was named a leader for text banking and Bank of America for its Android app.
Chase performed best in two of four categories, functionality and ease of use, while Wells Fargo led in privacy and security.
The scorecard comes out twice a year. Susan Fould, manager of the scorecard, said it helps banks improve their mobile-banking platforms.
"They use it to benchmark themselves and to understand where they have gaps," she said.
She said one big takeaway from the spring scorecard is that banks are improving the experience of using mobile-banking technology.
"There's more functionality," she said.
According to Keynote, which specializes in Internet and mobile cloud testing and monitoring, the number of mobile-banking consumers is expected to hit 1 billion by 2017.
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