Venzuela suspends Stanford bank sale

From AP:

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s finance ministry suspended the sale of a local bank controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford on Friday, saying the only bidder’s offer was too low.

Italcambio Casa de Cambio, a local brokerage, offered the equivalent of $55.8 million for Stanford Bank SA — 31 percent of the $180 million sought by a board of government officials overseeing the open auction, said Rodolfo Porro, a legal consultant at Venezuela’s Finance Ministry.

UBS: Home of 47,000 tax dodgers

From the AP:

UBS AG now says it had about 47,000 accounts held by Americans who didn’t pay U.S. taxes on their assets, but Switzerland’s biggest bank isn’t providing the names of any more of them to the U.S. government.

UBS official Mark Branson confirmed the figure of 47,000 accounts as of Sept. 30, at a Senate hearing exploring the fight over secrecy and alleged tax evasion.

Branson says nearly all the accounts have been closed.

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Wonder if any of those accounts belong to Stanford Financial execs?

Politicos should return Stanford money (Day 7)

3 p.m. update: There are a lot of stories going around about the Stanford fraud case, but this one (full text) from the Daily Mail in London made us laugh by how out there it was. First off, who is calling Laura Pendergest-Holt “the ice maiden?” We haven’t heard that and we’ve been traipsing all over Tupelo and Baldwyn. And, her house is in Mississippi – not North Carolina. The best laugh comes from this quote, attributed to the father of Pendergest-Holt’s first husband:

‘She certainly was a good businesswoman. She was making more money than my son. We really were pleased by everything we knew about her. She was very beautiful. She was a brilliant mathematician. And my son told me she was a virgin when they married. But she broke my son’s heart.’

2:45 p.m. update: The Biz went by Stanford’s offices in Fairpark. The lights were out, the doors were locked, no people were in sight and the “temporarily closed” sign was still taped to the door. However, we did see boxes packed up in the lobby, next to Stanford’s eagle mascot. We had to take the pictures through the glass panes in the door, which is why you’ll see the glare.

packed boxes in Stanford's lobby

Packed boxes in Stanford's empty office

——

StanfordFinancialRecievership.com has been updated to include the following information:

Stanford fraud case – Day 2

Stanford's building in Fairpark (taken at noon Tuesday)

3 p.m. update: Reuters is reporting that Laura Pendergest-Holt and Jim Davis have been served with court papers. However, their locations were not specified. Federal regulators said on Wednesday they do not know the whereabouts of billionaire Texas banker Allen Stanford, charged with a “massive” $8 billion international financial fraud.

Asked if Stanford may be outside the United States, she said: “Certainly that’s a possibility, but we don’t know.” Read the full story.

2 p.m. update: From AP: Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s office has issued subpoenas to gather the information from Stanford Financial offices in Mississippi.

“If there are problems in Mississippi with Stanford, we are going to find out about it,” Hosemann said. “By subpoenaing this information, we hope to find out if and how many Mississippians were affected by the products under investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission.”

Hosemann said his office received its first complaint against Stanford Financial on Wednesday, though he did not disclose the details of the complaint. Read the full story.

12:30 p.m. update: DJ chief photographer Thomas Wells spent the morning in Baldwyn. He found the homes of Jim Davis and Laura Pendergest-Holt. He said he saw a man at Davis’ home, but Pendergest-Holt’s home looked empty.

Home of Stanford CFO Jim Davis

Home of Stanford CIO Laura Pendergest-Holt

12:30 p.m. update: The Stanford Financial Group Receivership site is now active. However, it’s lacking a lot of information, including press information, FAQ and contact info. The site does say:

On February 17 and 18, 2009, direct all inquiries to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A link to the website for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which includes a press release relating to this matter, may be found under Links above.

Additional information will be posted on this website soon.

Banker gives bonus to workers

Big bankers, especially the Wall Street investment banking types, haven’t been exactly viewed with a lot of sympathy or regard in recent months.

One banker in Miami, however, clearly shows that all bankers are not created equal. Here’s an excerpt from a story in the Miami Herald:

Lots of bosses say they value their employees. Some even mean it. And then there’s Leonard Abess Jr.

After selling a majority stake in Miami-based City National Bancshares last November, all he did was take $60 million of the proceeds — $60 million out of his own pocket — and hand it to his tellers, bookkeepers, clerks, everyone on the payroll. All 399 workers on the staff received bonuses, and he even tracked down 72 former employees so they could share in the windfall.

For longtime employees, the bonus — based on years of service — amounted to tens of thousands of dollars, and in some cases, more than $100,000.

At a time when financial titans are being paraded before Congress to explain how they blew billions on executives’ bonuses even as they received a taxpayer bailout, the big-hearted banker’s selfless deed stands out.

Abess didn’t publicize what he had done. He didn’t even show up at the bank to bask in his employees’ gratitude on the day the bonus envelopes were distributed. He was inundated with letters soon afterward.

Asked later what motivated him, Abess said he had long dreamed of a way to reward employees. He had been thinking of creating an employee stock option plan before he decided to sell the bank.

“Those people who joined me and stayed with me at the bank with no promise of equity — I always thought someday I’m going to surprise them,” he said. “I sure as heck don’t need (the money).”

Citi to cut 53,000 jobs

Yikes. From AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup Inc. is shedding approximately 53,000 more employees in the coming quarters as the banking giant struggles to steady itself after suffering massive losses from deteriorating debt. The New York-based bank, which has already reduced its assets by about 20 percent since the first quarter of the year, also plans to trim expenses by 19 percent in 2009 from third-quarter levels, to $50 billion.

BancorpSouth added to S&P MidCap 400

From BancorpSouth, announcing some good news this morning:

BancorpSouth, Inc. (NYSE: BXS) announced that it will be added to the S&P MidCap 400 index at the close of trading today.  The S&P MidCap 400 is one of the most widely used stock market indices for mid-sized companies. The S&P MidCap 400 covers 7 percent of the U.S. equities markets and is comprised of companies that, among other qualifications, have a market capitalization of between $1.5 billion and $5.5 billion.

Aubrey Patterson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BancorpSouth, said, “We are pleased to announce the addition of BancorpSouth to the S&P MidCap 400, which is used by many in the financial industry as a basic building block of stock portfolio construction.  We welcome the greater market visibility and liquidity associated with inclusion.  Our selection is a tribute to the hard work of our colleagues throughout the Company, who are responsible for BancorpSouth’s profitable long-term growth, as well as to the support of our loyal customer base across our eight-state franchise.”

Renasant doubles Web traffic

An excerpt (full text) from a press release from Renasant’s Web design company:

ATLANTA – Goldleaf Financial Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ:GFSI), a provider of integrated technology-based solutions designed to improve the performance of financial institutions, today announced that Tupelo, Miss.-based Renasant Bank has successfully implemented Goldleaf’s Web design and hosting solution. According to the bank, since going live in May, their Web traffic has more than doubled, going from approximately 8,000 page views per day to upwards of 20,000.

When Stratton Huggins, marketing communications manager of Renasant, assessed the bank’s marketing strategy, he focused on tightening the cohesiveness of the brand across all channels of the enterprise as one of the bank’s highest priorities. According to Huggins, the Web site did not successfully tie into the bank’s overall brand. The initial drivers for updating the site were to incorporate the new look and feel of the bank’s brand marketing campaign. It was also paramount to ensure the site could easily communicate the features and benefits of the various products and services offered by the bank. Huggins also wanted to develop the site as an internal reference point that employees could use to increase their knowledge to identify cross-selling opportunities, as well as make the site more interactive and intuitive to navigate. The bank was also looking to the future, as Renasant has plans to use the site to enable online account opening in late 2008.

10 ways to protect your money

In today’s DJ story about what local bankers think of the Wall Street mayhem yesterday, Robin McGraw, chairman and CEO of Tupelo-based Renasant Bank, reminded banking consumers that the FDIC protects their deposits up to certain amounts.

A MarketWatch story expands on McGraw’s point and we encourage you to read it. However, the Biz takes offense to the comment about journalists moving in herds. Gah, or should we say, baa

An excerpt (full text) from Marketwatch courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

Here are ten things that this financial panic means for you.

1. Check that your bank accounts are federally insured. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) guarantees deposits up to $100,000 per person. If you have to hold more than that, spread it across multiple banks. As a taxpayer you are paying for this insurance. Use it.

2. Make sure your brokerage accounts are federally insured, too. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) guarantees you at places like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, E-Trade and the like up to $500,000, including $100,000 worth of cash. The same rules apply: If you have more to invest, spread it across multiple firms. Note: The SIPC is only there to make sure you get your shares and bonds back if a brokerage fails. It does not, obviously, guarantee those investments’ value.

Read the rest of the list here.

BancorpSouth ranks high with customers

The J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Retail Banking Satisfaction Study is out. BancorpSouth ranked the highest in the southeast region, while Regions/AmSouth came in at the bottom of the pack.

An excerpt from the J.D. Power press release (full text with graphs):

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.: 28 May 2008 — Poor problem resolution, long wait times and additional fees all contribute to an overall decline in customer satisfaction with retail banks, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Retail Banking Satisfaction Study released today.

The study, now in its third year, finds that overall satisfaction with the retail banking experience has decreased considerably since 2007—down 26 index points on a 1,000-point scale to 737 in 2008. In particular, dissatisfaction with fees is the most commonly reported problem by customers, as well as the second-most common reason for switching financial institutions. In addition, a rise in the number of problems experienced and problems that go unresolved, increases in wait times to see tellers or speak to phone representatives, and declines in the ease of accessing branches all contribute to the drop in satisfaction.

“Many retail banks are experiencing a decline in their brand image, especially in the current economic climate, where many consumers hold banks responsible for the current housing and mortgage crisis,” said Rockwell Clancy, executive director of financial services at J.D. Power and Associates. “With customers experiencing more problems, longer wait times and more fees, that negative view is intensified.”