By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
SOUTH BRONX / SDNY, March 19 – Back in April 2021, Fair Finance Watch and Inner City Press predicted that the proposed merger of New York Community Bank and Flagstar would flounder, on disparate lending and regulatory evasions. And it was delayed, see below.
But now, erasing history, it is announced that New York Community Bank has agreed to buy a significant chunk of the failed Signature Bank in a $2.7 billion deal, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said late Sunday. The 40 branches of Signature Bank will become Flagstar Bank, starting Monday. Flagstar is one of New York Community Bank’s subsidiaries. The deal will include the purchase of $38.4 billion in Signature Bank’s assets, a little more than a third of Signature’s total when the bank failed a week ago.
So, a fair lending rogue benefits from a bail out, or a bank with a former NYS Banking Superintendent Derrick Cephas, and Barney Frank, on its board of directors? We'll have more on this.
Fair Finance Watch found that in 2019 Flagstar made 60,982 mortgage loans to whites, with 13,963 denial to whites - while making only 3799 loans to African Americans with fully 1777 denials to African American. This was significantly worse than other lenders.
New York Community Bank's record as an enabler of and profiteer off slumlords led Inner City Press file a Community Reinvestment Act challenge to its then-proposed merger with Astoria Bank, which fell apart.
Now a year a half later, the proposed merger is still not done and the extended deadline is approaching, amid talk of, as we predicted, fair lending action. Both companies' stock prices are down. CRA and fair lending sometimes do have an impact. Watch this site.
Watch this site.
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