By Matthew R. Lee
NEW YORK, Jan 15 – At what point does bank executives' spin to investors and the media become more than misleading? And now, what does it mean when a bank belatedly confirms it stands with and for death?
Take Community Bank System (NYSE: CBU), which when Fair Finance Watch previously challenged it received nine additional questions from the Federal Reserve on its proposal to acquire Merchants, after its CEO derided issues Fair Finance Watch raised about the proposal.
CBU made a point of saying that New York City-based Fair Finance Watch was not local enough to them to raise issues.
But now in 2026 CBU is going national, perhaps international, in the death industry. CBU announced without irony: "Community Financial System (NYSE: CBU) announced that its wholly owned banking subsidiary, Community Bank, has agreed to acquire ClearPoint Federal Bank & Trust... a key player in trust administration for the $20 billion U.S. death care industry."
Ah, death care. They'll be hearing more from non-local FFW about this one. Watch this space - while you can.
On a past proposal, CBSI bad-mouthed a Community Reinvestment Act protest even as it had to delay its Oneida deal. First, CBSI's "Hal Wentworth said that Inner City Press is not a local group and pointed out that letter was the only one filed on the Oneida deal. 'This activist does not do business with either Oneida or Community Bank, but nonetheless made vague allegations regarding Community,' Wentworth said. 'These allegations were entirely without merit and will be fully addressed by Community Bank and Oneida Savings in the application process.'" Then the deal was significantly delayed, with CBSI pushing the date back.
More spin: CFO Scott Kingsley told the media that FFW's protest "is not the sole reason. We have other things that have to sequentially happen to get to the technological conversion in July. When we did not have a definitive answer from the Fed or other parties last week, that put the technological conversion at risk, so we opted not to go ahead.”
This time, it went to the CEO Mark Tryniski, who in January 2017 told stock analysts that "despite the baseless protest filed with the Fed Reserve by a serial activist, we expect to close in the second" question. We'll see. Among the nine questions: "Community Bank states that, to the extent it does not intend to continue to offer certain loan products and services offered by Merchants Bank post-merger, it does not believe that not offering such products and services would have a significant impact on the target bank's communities. As an example, Community Bank cites the fact that Merchants Bank would no longer accept applications for FHA/VA loans (on behalf of a mortgage company), but that Community Bank would offer loan products and programs which are not currently offered by Merchants Bank that Community Bank believes are comparable and 'equally valuable' to its communities, such as FNMA's Home Ready Program, Community Bank's Affordable Housing Program, and the USDA loan program. Compare the features of FHA and VA loans for which applications are presently taken by Merchants Bank with the features of the products and programs that Community Bank asserts are comparable, including any features of FHA and VA loans that are not covered by Community Bank's offerings." Watch this site.
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