Public Meeting Regarding NationsBank and BankAmerica - Panel 17
Thursday, July 9, 1998
Transcript of Panel Seventeen
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20 MS. KITCHEN: I'm Heather Kitchen. I'm
21 managing director of American Conservatory Theater here
22 in San Francisco. American Conservatory Theater's
23 mission is to nurture the art of live theater through
24 dramatic dynamic productions, intensive actor training in
25 our conservatory, and an ongoing dialogue with our
26 audience and our community. ACT is a not-for-profit
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1 corporation. It has an operating budget of more than $13
2 million annually.
3 We believe that our work as artists is
4 fundamental to a complete and healthy community. Bank of
5 America has been a partner with ACT in producing our
6 work, not only philanthropically but as a business
7 partner. NationsBank has played a similar role with our
8 colleagues in Charlotte, North Carolina. ACT supports
9 the merger of Bank of America and NationsBank.
10 In a very fiscally difficult time following the
11 Loma Prieta earthquake, while the rebuilding of our
12 theater was underway, Bank of America stepped forward and
13 provided American Conservatory Theater with the operating
14 capital to allow us to mount our first season back in the
15 Geary Theater. They've continued to work with us since.
16 They provided us with a favorable term loan for our
17 capital campaign, which covers our expenses until our
18 pledges are fully realized in the year 2002.
19 During the past two years, our relationship with
20 Bank of America has continued to grow. Since the
21 announcement of the impending merger, our banking
22 relationship has deepened. In our most recent year-end
23 review last month, the bank's representative offered ACT
24 further improvements in the business terms of the loan.
25 Our relationship and that of our colleagues in Charlotte,
26 North Carolina will continue to prosper with the merger
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1 of Bank of America and NationsBank as we continue to
2 partner with the bank to present our cities with
3 outstanding live theater. Thank you.
4 MS. SMITH: Ms. Peck.
5 MS. PECK: Good evening. I'm Susan Peck,
6 western director of the Housing Assistance Council, which
7 is a national nonprofit organization that was created to
8 improve the housing conditions of the rural poor.
9 One of the things that we do nationwide is
10 operate a pre-development loan fund for nonprofits and
11 public agencies to allow them to get to the point where
12 they can develop housing and receive long-term
13 financing. And as part of that program, we have a 13 and
14 a half million dollar federally-funded program for
15 self-help housing developments.
16 And I just wanted to mention that Bank of
17 America has provided us funding to help in the
18 implementation of that program. The federal funding
19 unfortunately came with no administrative money. And
20 most of that money will be turned back to the local
21 nonprofits once they've developed the 1,600 units of
22 housing, home ownership housing, and 75 percent of that
23 money will go back into their communities.
24 It's also my pleasure this evening to represent
25 the California Coalition for Rural Housing, which is a
26 statewide rural housing advocacy and education
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1 organization. And I also serve on the California
2 advisory committee of the Rural 2000 initiative.
3 My brief remarks will focus exclusively on rural
4 matters. I'd like to point out that rural parts of our
5 nation suffer a higher rate of poverty than our urban
6 counterparts, 17 percent versus 14 percent. And within
7 rural America, there are persistent pockets of poverty.
8 These are primarily in the Mississippi delta area, along
9 the US and Mexico boarder, in Indian country, and in
10 Appalachia. These are the areas that Housing Assistance
11 Council focus most of its attention since poverty, as you
12 all know, has such a considerable impact on housing
13 conditions.
14 Much of our work also targets areas where farm
15 workers live and work, all too many in the most
16 deplorable of housing conditions. About one-third of the
17 nation's farm workers have incomes of less than $5,000.
18 With incomes like these throughout rural America, it's
19 clear that no bank alone, nor a merged bank, can
20 adequately address the housing needs of the poor without
21 not only combining their resources but being very
22 flexible in the way that they provide those resources and
23 also with partnering, to the extent that they can, with
24 subsidies from federal, state, and local government.
25 I'd like to quickly tell you of one relationship
26 between the Bank of America Community Development Bank,
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1 the Bank of America Foundation, the United States
2 Department of Agriculture, the Ford Foundation, and
3 Housing Assistance Council that exemplifies the
4 commitment of Bank of America to rural housing
5 improvement. This -- and particularly rural housing
6 improvement that involves a particularly difficult
7 population to serve. These are largely very low-income
8 Hispanic families who are purchasing lots that lack basic
9 infrastructure and they're doing so through land
10 contracts.
11 This collaborative effort to enable local groups
12 surveying communities known as colonies to assess their
13 own needs and to help develop strategies for improvement,
14 including innovative bank products, must in our opinion
15 be continued should this merger be approved. This
16 particular collaborative is promoting local capacity
17 building and a flexible approach to lending within the
18 banking community.
19 The groups that I represent have many
20 expectations for this intended merger, including a
21 commitment specifically targeted to very low and
22 low-income rural households, people of color, and special
23 populations such as Native Americans and farm workers.
24 Part of this targeting should emphasize the role of
25 self-help housing development, where families build their
26 own housing, and loan products for seasonal workers.
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1 The commitment should also have a priority for
2 nonprofit housing developers who are critical to the
3 improvement of rural housing. There should be an
4 elimination of any minimum loan sizes for rental
5 housing. You would be seeking the preservation and
6 expansion of the Bank of America Community Development
7 Bank that is such a major player in rural housing
8 improvement, also the preservation of the Bank of America
9 Foundation's rural priorities that were recommended by
10 the Rural 2000 initiative, and preservation and expansion
11 of the Rural 2000 initiative with the addition of
12 regional advisory groups for NationsBank's geographic
13 areas.
14 We'd also like careful consideration of any
15 further bank closings in rural communities. There are
16 over 500 rural counties in this nation that have no bank
17 branch at all, and in many rural counties, though you
18 have a bank branch, they're not doing any real estate
19 lending.
20 Thank you for this opportunity to participate.
21 MS. SMITH: Thank you. Ms. Washington.
22 MS. WASHINGTON: My name is Sheila Washington,
23 president of the California Business Incubation Network.
24 We were founded about seven years ago to raise a level of
25 awareness of the incubation period for creating and
26 growing and launching new businesses that incubate new
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1 ideas into the marketplace.
2 We thank the Federal Reserve for holding this
3 forum. And secondly, we'd like to say we support the
4 merger/acquisition -- I put a slash acquisition because
5 I'm never sure what's the correct terminology -- of Bank
6 of America and NationsBank.
7 Next I'd like to take this opportunity to thank
8 the Bank of America for its role in incubating businesses
9 and economic development initiatives in the state of
10 California. They were the first in line to support
11 facility-based business incubators in the state. This
12 was back when no one else was talking about it. Now
13 everybody is talking about it.
14 They have always been at the table involving
15 business and economic development initiatives. We'd like
16 to offer our kudos to the management and staff of the
17 bank's community development department, and we would
18 also like to support the retention of the Community
19 Development Bank, especially the retention of the
20 Community Development Bank as a separate entity and the
21 Community Foundation here in California.
22 I cannot imagine a California without the name
23 Bank of America. However, moving on, we welcome the
24 entrance of NationsBank, and we're looking forward to the
25 resources they will bring to continue and build upon the
26 work that the Bank of America has initiated.
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1 Now, we'd like to focus the future as far as
2 economic development is concerned on a couple of things.
3 One, we would like to have a priority given to
4 development of sustainable -- to the development of a
5 sustainable infrastructure for small business development
6 to meet the diversity of community needs.
7 And, two, we would like to put on the top
8 priority list linking of lending and technical
9 assistance, meaning pre-loan and post-loan assistance.
10 And, three, we would like to emphasize or ask
11 that community economic development investment fund to
12 support these efforts be one of the agenda items.
13 Now, we appreciate and like the big monies of
14 $350 billion and what have you, but we can tell you that
15 in order for that to reach the level of business
16 development that we see necessary, you need to also
17 combine the technical assistance arm of lending. And
18 we've done a lot of work on initiating some of these kind
19 of structures. Nonprofit organization has been at the
20 forefront of helping, as you've heard many times today,
21 making this possible.
22 Now, where we are right now is to raise the
23 level of how we do that. The delivery system as it has
24 so far evolved needs to be structured now and raised in
25 its importance relative to the commitment of -- for
26 lending and economic development.
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1 We would encourage the Federal Reserve Agency to
2 continue its efforts along these lines. You have done
3 yourself -- the agency has participated in some workshops
4 and some initial gathering of evidence relative to
5 technical assistance. So I'd also like to raise that
6 level of awareness, that we would like to see that
7 continued and accelerated, actually, so that we can
8 continue -- so that we can have sustainable businesses.
9 As we move forward, it is time that there be a
10 focus on the system of nonprofit organizations. They
11 have been primary vehicles these past ten years, and it's
12 time that they get their chance just like the housing --
13 the housing segment did ten years ago. If you'll
14 remember, ten years ago housing was just starting out to
15 build its own infrastructure for affordable housing. Now
16 we have some system of nonprofit developers within the
17 housing community. Now, that's the same kind of thing
18 that the business side needs today to be accelerated.
19 CBIN is a statewide organization for the
20 incubation of ideas, that is, the creation and launching
21 and growing of business enterprises. Again, we thank you
22 for this opportunity, and we're looking forward to
23 working with the combined banks to achieve sustainable
24 economic development in California. Thank you.
25 MS. SMITH: Thank you. Mr. Kaimowitz.
26 MR. KAIMOWITZ: My name is Gabe Kaimowitz. I'm
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1 Florida representative for an organization formed in 1995
2 known as Attorneys Against American Apartheid. The
3 concept is taken from a book by Professor Douglas Massey
4 of the University of Pennsylvania and Nancy Denton, now
5 in Albany in New York.
6 The intent of the group was in 1995 to monitor
7 how federal funding, how local funding, and how private
8 funding are used to re-segregate parts of the United
9 States, and that inevitably resulted in scrutiny of
10 mergers such as that of Bank of America and NationsBank.
11 Let me state at the outset that I know virtually
12 nothing about Bank of America. I feel -- and I should
13 add this -- that I'm here much as somebody at a wedding
14 who is asked, "Speak now if you're ever going to speak if
15 you have an objection."
16 I do think the merger is going forward. I think
17 it should perhaps go forward. But based on precedent
18 that I will cite specifically, I think, for Mr. Frierson
19 and in response to his question to Mr. Devine earlier.
20 Based on precedence, I urge the Federal Board to look at
21 this merger as closely as it ever has looked before.
22 You've heard much testimony here today, and I
23 would say I learned a lot today. And one of the things I
24 learned supports the basic thesis that I'm here to
25 deliver, which is that NationsBank has moved on from its
26 origins in North Carolina and especially, from my
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1 knowledge, in Florida and in Central Florida, deserting
2 areas where it has previously made promises and
3 commitments and moved on to bigger promises and bigger
4 commitments. What has it left in its wake?
5 I and NationsBank and, for reasons that I will
6 explain shortly, First Union arrived in Florida at the
7 same time in 1985. Apparently you've learned today that
8 something called the Black Business Investment Fund
9 created by the state arrived about the same time. That
10 confluence was not unexpected. Most of it is attributed
11 to one single attorney, and it's important that he be
12 understood as an attorney, who's the general counsel of
13 the Florida Banking Association. He's also an attorney
14 and partner in one of the most prominent and the fastest
15 growing law firms in the United States, according to the
16 National Law Journal in November of 1997.
17 I want to discuss it in two phases. One, that
18 in 1985 to 1991, NCND and CNS entered the Florida market
19 and were immediately challenged, as you've heard today,
20 by numerous groups. And lo and behold the challenges
21 were immediately solved. And many of the groups today
22 will go home -- as well I think happened with ACORN. We
23 had a meeting. They gave us something. They promised us
24 something. That was enough. My God, they sat down at
25 the table with us, bankers. What that resulted was a
26 shallow group of promises that resulted in no commitment
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1 of any sort.
2 I then proceeded to challenge First Union. The
3 cite is -- because it's the same model I intend to use at
4 this point -- 940F 2nd at 610 -- yeah, at 610 -- 11th
5 Circuit, 1991.
6 The premise, then, which is amplified at this
7 point is that locally many of these banks can't and won't
8 do the commitments because of a history of racial
9 segregation that exists in certain areas of this country
10 tied to land and land use. Nowhere is that more evident
11 than in the state of Florida and particularly in Central
12 Florida.
13 I would have prevailed against First Union. I
14 did prevail in persuading both the board and the office
15 and the controller of currency that First Union had been
16 tremendously remiss in its promises.
17 I've already submitted my written documentation,
18 and I won't go into it at great length. It consists of
19 the history of NationsBank in Central Florida,
20 particularly in Orlando, and its tie-in to the political
21 structure from 1985 to the present and a supplement that
22 I put together relatively rapidly.
23 I just want to end on a point that I think will
24 personify it. The story keeps moving on rapidly. And
25 that is that when you're dealing in a place like Orlando,
26 Florida, you have a situation where the merger was given
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1 one paragraph because the $350 billion is taken with a
2 grain of salt after the history in Orlando.
3 NationsBank, however, has chosen -- and this ad
4 I think says it all, along with the story. On July 8th,
5 notice -- I'm sorry, that's the first -- no, I'm sorry.
6 I raised the wrong one. In there notice the headline
7 and the story that accompanies, "Blacks May Absorb More
8 Nicotine." There's your money to the end power.
9 What you've got is the bank advertising heavily,
10 often with an elderly white couple in the center in the
11 main dailies in the area tied to this particular merger.
12 What you have in three black weeklies, weeklies targeted
13 to African-Americans, are very small ads that concentrate
14 on the African-American audience.
15 You were asked this morning to consider, and I
16 ask you again to consider the racial aspect of this
17 merger and how much it is influenced by a southern bank
18 moving in a direction with values that it has inculcated
19 certainly since 1985. Thank you for your time.
20 MS. SMITH: Thank you very much.
21 With that, we will adjourn the meeting. But I
22 want to observe it has been a very long day. However, we
23 have received important testimony from all of the panels.
24 And we know the considerable effort that it took for some
25 organizations to come and be represented here today, and
26 we thank all of them, whether from California or from the
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1 east coast. And we are adjourned, then, until tomorrow
2 morning at 8:30 a.m.