One Wilmington bank may be in trouble

Another great move by BoA. They won't be forthcoming with info after taking tax money. Bank of America subpoenaed during CEO's testimony

I hope I am not accidentally posting this twice: I have to weigh in on this. I want to remind people that Cooperative Bank is barely undercapitalized by .06% I believe. We have been hurt by the construction business and it's woes. Cooperative makes A loans only, depending on the situation, some in house less than perfect loans for borrowers who have been long time customers. Our mortgage dept is booming and our home mortgages are perfoming well. We DO NOT sell all our loans. We are one of few local banks, to the best of my knowledge, that retain and service loans. Often times it is the borrower who choses a sold loan program for a sometimes slightly lower interest rate. We do alot of business with Freddie Mac, and in turn the higher ups invested in Freddie. Cooperative Bank was not doing any of the shady loans you hear about that have brought on the demise and the government take over of Freddie/Fannie. We are a good institution and try to do the best by our customers. Cooperative has been here over 100 years and made it through the depression. I hope that our customers will stay on and ride this out with us. BOA and Wachovia are the some of the banks who got us into this mess with their pick a pay plans and stated income/stated assetts loans. Anyway, that is all I have to say. I love my bank and love working there and I am hopeful for a bright future.

Cooperative is going down. Bank of America and Citibank will likely be nationalized within a week. I recommend doing business with a local credit union.

I'm keeping my money with cooperative and the State Employees credit union and pulled all my money away from Suntrust and Wachovia last year. At least in Cooperative and SECU, my money stays local and I can still talk to someone who cares about my business instead of the big banks trying to gouge me with service charges and bad service!

Time to pull out. I took everything I had out of Cooperative Bank and put it into BOA. The remaining people that bank with Cooperative should do the same. Find a more stable bank like Bank of America or a banking business that has already been restructured like Wachovia/Wells Fargo. Most banks in this position do not pull out. Cooperative like so many banks in the nation and this area lent to much. Now these developers can't pay back there debt and are going under filing for Bankruptcy. Good example is St. Lawrence Homes. This developer came in and tried to introduce high end homes when the area was already flooded with them. They con the banks into giving them loans and now everyone is in trouble. They can't sell anything and now they are filing for Chapter 11. Smaller business will soon follow. This is the time people to start thinking about your finances, and save save save!

....but it means everything to potential investors. Still, I'm confused why this is just hitting the news. The bank was listed as undercapitalized almost two months ago, and the handwriting was on the wall even earlier when the value of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock all but collapsed. That cost Cooperative almost nine million dollars and caused them to suspend their dividend. (Cooperative, like many of the bigger names, put far too much money into what they secretly knew for many years was a fatally flawed house of cards. Now, a Bank of America or J.P. Morgan Chase can drop nine million on Kleenex for the ladies' room, but it severely hurt Cooperative.) I sincerely hope that they pull out of the nosedive and recover. They were once a good bank. Unfortunately, they could stand as a poster child for everything that became so wrong with mortgage banking in the past fifteen years. In their defense, it's difficult to fight the tide and stand strong on traditional banking principles while every other bank stock is outperforming you quarter after quarter. (Even if their "performance" is nonsense) They did the same thing most other banks were doing. They just did it a bit too much for the size of their operation. Still, all is not lost. They have the ability to weather this storm and with some top-notch leadership, they could once again be a regional superstar - this time, built on REAL money. Their mortgage operation (Lumina) is top-notch and was a prolific money pump. The uptick in refinancing is raising some desperately needed capital. The bank might also consider being less of a "mortgage pimp" and more of a "mortgage provider." There are a LOT of borrowers with scores over 740 around here, and the bank needs to consider retaining those notes instead of selling them immediately. After all, the bank was built on a constant revenue stream from reliable borrowers, and maybe it's time to return to that basic concept. A cursory glance at regional bank stocks shows the banks that stuck to the basics have done far better in the current storm.

no real need for long term concern. Read the press release announcing Mr. Willets retirement as CEO. Cooperative has been an active participant in loan generation for development and residential new construction. They feel the pinch from the economic downturn. They will likely become much more conservative in their lending practices in this area. Depositors have no cause or alarm.

When the Federal government announces that a bank is troubled, the announcement alone frequently causes the bank to fail. The announcement causes depositors to lose confidence and rush to the bank to withdraw their funds. The rush on cash makes the bank close its' doors, since they do not keep enough cash around to cover all depositors wanting to wothdraw at once. Most of their assets are in the form of loans receivable from other bank customers.