Public Meeting Regarding First Chicago and Banc One
Thursday, August 13, 1998
Transcript of Panel Seventeen
15 MS. JOHNS: I thank the Federal Reserve Bank
16 for the opportunity to come and talk about this
17 pending merger.
18 I am CEO of Capital Across America and
19 also President-Elect of the National Association of
20 Women Business Owners and Board member of the
21 National Foundation for Women Business Owners.
22 And I'm here today to address Banc One's
23 investment in Capital Across America as the first
24 SBIC in the history of the Small Business
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1 Investment Corporation Program that focuses on
2 investments in women-owned businesses.
3 Capital Across America is an investment
4 fund created to provide growth capital to
5 women-owned firms who are growing their companies.
6 We are located in Tennessee, but we intend to serve
7 businesses nationwide.
8 In the beginning, however, we are limited
9 to the areas in which we have financial partners or
10 states contiguous to Tennessee. With Banc One's
11 investment in our fund, we're able to go into areas
12 in which Banc One is located.
13 So we're very excited about the
14 opportunity for this pending merger to occur so
15 that we can go into some dynamic areas, such as
16 Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis, to name some of
17 the larger cities in this area.
18 We are -- in the SBIC program, which is
19 administered by the Small Business Administration,
20 we had to raise a minimum amount of capital in
21 order to become a licensed SBIC.
22 We were able to raise approximately
23 $7 million, but our largest investor and our first
24 institutional investor was Banc One.
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1 And I would say they came to the table not
2 only with money, but also with resources behind
3 that money and talented people who have become
4 involved with Capital Across America.
5 Having gone through the process of trying
6 to raise money for the first fund of its kind in
7 the country, I can tell you it was rather difficult
8 in approaching the financial institutions. And
9 Banc One was a very receptive institution and was
10 the first, in my opinion, to make a significant
11 investment in the fund of our type.
12 Their $3 million investment is the
13 largest of its kind in the country in a fund that
14 focuses on women business owners that has been
15 licensed as an SBIC.
16 Banc One has a division of -- let's see,
17 it's called the Women's Entrepreneur Initiatives
18 Division, which I believe is directly responsible
19 for their interest in a fund such as ours. It's
20 through Vanessa Freytag's efforts that she became
21 aware of Capital Across America and made the bank
22 known of the opportunity to invest in us.
23 Through their community development
24 corporation and Lynn Gellermann, the bank made a
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1 decision to make that investment. And they've
2 allowed Lynn Gellermann the opportunity to serve on
3 our Board of Directors, which is a great asset for
4 a fund such as ours.
5 Since Banc One has become involved with
6 our fund, other banks have followed suit. And I
7 think that Banc One has been a role model as far as
8 approaching the underserved market of women
9 business owners who have growing companies in this
10 country.
11 And a little bit about that, there are
12 approximately 8 million women business owners in
13 the United States, which is approximately
14 40 percent of all businesses now in this country.
15 They employ 18 and a half million people, which is
16 one out of every four U.S. workers. That's
17 35 percent more than the Fortune 500 employees
18 worldwide.
19 So women business ownership is an
20 important part of our economy and one reason why I
21 think our economic cycle has continued to remain
22 very strong in this day and age.
23 And it is very important that we continue
24 to provide growth capital to the women business
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1 owner community so that they can continue to add
2 employees to their companies and grow their
3 companies and be community leaders within where
4 their businesses are located.
5 So this potential or pending merger is
6 very important to us in Capital Across America so
7 that we can reach more women business owners in
8 this part of the country. There's this dynamic
9 opportunity for us as the first debenture SBIC in
10 the country to focus on women business owners. So
11 thank you.
12 MS. SMITH: Thank you very much.
13 Ms. Paycheaud.
14 MS. PAYCHEAUD: You having fun with that?
15 Phonetically, it's Paysho, P-A-Y-S-H-O. It doesn't
16 look like that, but then I'm from Louisiana, so
17 everything that you see in Louisiana does not
18 always look the way it actually is.
19 And I think that that -- my name is
20 Rosalyn Paycheaud. I'm Executive Director of the
21 Neighborhood Development Foundation.
22 And the Neighborhood Development
23 Foundation is a program that was established in
24 1986 on the belief that decent, safe, affordable
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1 housing is essential to an individual's
2 well-being.
3 And to that end, that is what we do.
4 We don't develop houses. We empower people to go
5 out and get the money that they need in order to
6 buy a house.
7 I want to tell you a little bit about
8 NDF because I think that credibility is very
9 important.
10 We were established, again, in 1986. We
11 have a pristine Board of Directors that includes
12 representatives from Banc One on our Board. We're
13 well-respected in the community. We're certified
14 housing counselling agency by HUD, by Fannie Mae,
15 by Freddie Mac, by our local lending authority.
16 We own a list of organizations to provide
17 home buyers training for our local funding
18 authority. We prepare a minimum of 150 first-time
19 home buyers each year to own their own piece of
20 New Orleans.
21 We're a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
22 that believes that, even though we're nonprofit, we
23 ought to be able to operate like a business. We
24 are identified as a national model by the
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1 Enterprise Foundation, which was involved in our
2 establishment in 1986.
3 We think that we're good at what we do.
4 We work with our clients, we say, from the
5 beginning to the end. We provide pre-purchase
6 counselling, budget planning, a 12-hour home
7 training class. And we're a little rigid about
8 that class because you're either there 15 minutes
9 into the class and you're there when it ends or you
10 take the class over. And that's part of our
11 commitment to prepare people for home ownership.
12 We believe that education is the key.
13 And if an individual knows what's expected of them,
14 then they'll be able to achieve. We don't train
15 anyone that's not bankable to us. We can't do it
16 because you can't buy a house if you don't have
17 any money.
18 And when we were established in 1986,
19 First NBC, who now Banc One owns, or First NBC
20 is -- and Banc One, in my mind, are one. They were
21 pioneers for us. And we don't anticipate any
22 change in that.
23 First NBC put money in an affordable
24 marketing pool that our clients were able to access
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1 when no one else did that.
2 So, you know, we're looking forward to
3 change. We're not intimidated by change. We
4 welcome the opportunity to have products that
5 Banc One is bringing into our state.
6 One of the things that I've learned today
7 in this room is that there's a lot of fear and a
8 lot of resistance to change. And a lot of it has
9 to do with the misinformation and the fact that
10 people don't really understand what's going on
11 with them.
12 We needed to have Banc -- we need to have
13 Banc One involved in what we do because we can't do
14 it without having financial support. We're used to
15 having the kind of technical assistance that we
16 need and expertise that we need in order for our
17 organization to continue doing what we do.
18 We need the resources as well. Our
19 clients need to have access to affordable housing
20 dollars. We also prepare them to recognize when
21 they're being discriminated against. It's a part
22 of our training.
23 Everyone that's involved in that mortgage
24 process comes to our class and teaches a segment of
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1 that class, so that when our clients go into any
2 bank looking for a loan, they know what -- they're
3 prepared when they go in. And they know when an
4 insurance company is red-lining them and they know
5 when they're being discriminated against and they
6 know we'll be there for them.
7 So I'm here today to let you know that we
8 work with Banc One. We look forward to continuing
9 to work with Banc One and encourage you to, like,
10 do what you do in terms of monitoring the process.
11 And this open forum is very important,
12 but look at it for what it is, because not
13 everyone has had the same type of experience that
14 I've heard described in this room today. Thank you
15 very much.
16 Oh, one more thing. I brought you
17 some visuals because I'm a visual person. We do
18 an annual fund-raiser every year. And I'm in
19 Chicago, okay? This is Mike Ditka in an issue. I
20 have Banc One on here. I have the clergy. I have
21 Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac. I have Arial Lenders. I
22 have my clients.
23 That's what it's about, building
24 coalitions. And that's what Banc One does for the
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1 community. These are yours.
2 MS. SMITH: Thank you very much.
3 Mr. Pritscher.
4 MR. PRITSCHER: Thank you, and thank you.
5 Hello. I'm John Pritscher, the President
6 of Community Investment Corporation in Chicago.
7 Like I know other people travelled long distances,
8 it took me about a two-minute walk, and for which I
9 am very grateful.
10 I'm here, though -- I would have gone long
11 distances, though, to support this merger because
12 of my experience, predominantly with First Chicago
13 NBD, but also in a lesser way with NBD because
14 they're not as big in Chicago.
15 The Community Investment Corporation is a
16 not-for-profit mortgage lender. We're the largest
17 multifamily rehab lender in Chicago. This year
18 we'll do about 45 to $50 million in multi-family
19 rehab loans, about 85 or 90 loans with about
20 over 2,000 apartment units. So we're a good-sized
21 lender.
22 I've been with them for 14 years. We were
23 founded by the banking community to make sure that
24 funds were accessible in all parts of the city.
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1 And we've really come a long way, thanks,
2 in part, to the Community Reinvestment Act, thanks
3 also to the fact that I think banks have gotten
4 religioned by being involved with neighborhoods and
5 communities and seeing that it's a profit center
6 and that it works, that it's good business, and
7 that they can't let their cities go to hell around
8 them and still have a good source. That's been my
9 experience in Chicago, at least.
10 In today's world of bank mergers, the real
11 world we're in, I think it's very important that in
12 strengthening the Midwest that this merger move
13 forward and that First Chicago and NBD stay and be
14 controlled as a Midwest entity.
15 First Chicago is extraordinarily important
16 to Chicago. And they're the largest bank. I could
17 perhaps give some -- an example of the role they've
18 played with Community Investment Corporation.
19 We have a 525 million revolving loan pool
20 that we were happily in this very room on July 8th
21 celebrating the fact that this pool was extended
22 from the year 2000 to the year 2010 and that a
23 hundred million of this pool was set aside to do
24 loans that nobody else could do.
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1 And I'll go into that briefly, but that a
2 pool risk lender that specialized in apartment
3 rehab lending could sensibly do and that maybe an
4 individual bank might not be able to do.
5 CIC was encouraged by First Chicago to
6 move forward and to take this step to do loans that
7 nobody else could possibly do, plus to extend the
8 pool through 2010 with the same revolving basis so
9 that, in fact, we'll have, like, close to a billion
10 dollars lent by the end of that period because the
11 money revolves. As we pay it back -- someone pays
12 back a loan, it's as if the loan was never made and
13 we can use it again.
14 When we work -- we've worked with First
15 Chicago NBD and Banc One over these 14 years that I
16 have been with them. And we worked with
17 predecessor banks that were absorbed, if you will,
18 by the merger process.
19 And First Chicago has -- and NBD both, but
20 especially First Chicago in Chicago, has always
21 taken on and accepted the responsibilities of
22 American National, Gary Wheaton, NBD, you know, all
23 of the others that have come on.
24 And we asked -- the only thing that we
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1 asked of NBD was that they had only a $1 million
2 commitment, where we have $120 million through the
3 First Chicago entities, that they extend this.
4 They volunteered a loan committee member.
5 And they've both been active in that.
6 They're also -- when we started to look at what we
7 can do to beat MMBs (phonetic), First Chicago
8 shared the information of what they were doing in
9 their own neighborhood lending program.
10 They were doing -- they are doing --
11 they do aggressive lending. They've worked in
12 partnership with us as aggressive lenders over
13 the years.
14 And I think that if the merger doesn't
15 take place, I'm fearful that some other type of a
16 merger will take place without the Midwest control,
17 without the local commitment that both -- that
18 First -- certainly that First Chicago has shown in
19 the Chicago Metropolitan area.
20 MS. SMITH: Thank you very much. We'll go to
21 Mr. Roberts.
22 MR. ROBERTS: Thank you for the opportunity to
23 be here today to speak in favor of this merger. My
24 name is John Roberts. I am president of Mezzanine
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1 Capital Management, which is the administrator of
2 the Ohio Mezzanine Fund.
3 The Ohio Mezzanine Fund is a multi-bank
4 community development corporation organized and
5 funded in February of 1996.
6 The fund was organized and is owned by
7 eight Ohio banks, who invested nearly $10 million
8 for the purpose of providing creative and flexible
9 financing that otherwise would not be available to
10 small and mid-sized businesses.
11 This financing is provided in the form of
12 subordinated debt in amounts from $100,000 up to
13 $750,000, again to small and mid-sized businesses
14 who are young and growing rapidly, but which are
15 not yet fully bankable.
16 While equity in mezzanine debt sources are
17 plentiful for large companies that need $1 million
18 or more, there are very few organized sources for
19 this type of risk capital under $1 million for
20 small businesses. This is a niche on which the
21 Ohio Mezzanine Fund focuses.
22 The Ohio Mezzanine Fund is unique in
23 that the fund is actively managed by its investor
24 banks at the board of managers and investment
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1 committee levels.
2 In addition, the Fund relies on referrals
3 for investment opportunities from the investor
4 banks and each investment that the fund makes in a
5 smaller mid-sized business must be matched at least
6 dollar for dollar by a new senior loan from one of
7 the investor banks.
8 This allows the Fund and each of its
9 investor banks to form a unique partnership to
10 provide complete financing packages which otherwise
11 would not be available to small and mid-sized
12 businesses.
13 To date, in a little over two years, the
14 Ohio Mezzanine Fund has invested over $5.5 million
15 in 11 Ohio businesses. This investment has
16 leveraged over $15 million of senior bank financing
17 from the Fund's investment banks.
18 That financing would not have been
19 available to those 11 businesses without the
20 participation of the Ohio Mezzanine Fund.
21 This financing has made possible the
22 expansion of these businesses, which has led to job
23 growth and other economic benefits for the Ohio
24 communities where they are located.
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1 Also in its first two years, the Fund has
2 enjoyed several success stories in the form of
3 three businesses that have improved their operating
4 and financial track records to the point that
5 their bank has increased its financing with the
6 business to allow the business to prepay the Ohio
7 Mezzanine Fund and become fully bank financed at a
8 lower cost.
9 This partnership between banks and the
10 multi-bank community development corporation format
11 is important in delivering flexible higher-risk
12 capital that otherwise would not be available to
13 small and mid-sized businesses in Ohio.
14 From the beginning, Banc One has been an
15 active and supportive partner and has taken the
16 leadership role in the formation and operation of
17 the Fund. Banc One was the first bank to verbally
18 commit to providing capital to the Fund and
19 subsequently invested $1.75 million in the form of
20 $250,000 of equity and a $1,500,000 line of
21 credit.
22 In addition, Banc One hosted several
23 organizational meetings in which other banks in
24 Ohio were invited to attend and considered
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1 investing in the Fund. Banc One personnel also
2 talked with other bank decision-makers to influence
3 their involvement in the Fund.
4 Once the Fund was organized, Banc One
5 again assumed the leadership role by providing
6 senior level management to serve on the Board of
7 Managers and on the investment committee.
8 For example, the initial representatives
9 from Banc One to the Board of Managers and the
10 investment committee were an executive vice
11 president and senior vice president respectively.
12 Their management and credit experience has been
13 instrumental in the Fund's success to date.
14 Banc One has also played an important role
15 in sponsoring investment opportunities to the Ohio
16 Mezzanine Fund.
17 Banc One lenders have referred many deals
18 over the Fund's two-year period and Banc One has
19 provided senior financing along with subordinate
20 financing from the fund in two deals totaling over
21 $5.8 million.
22 In April of this year, the Fund's Board of
23 Managers determined that the Fund was working very
24 well and should expand its territory to include the
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1 Columbus, Ohio, market area.
2 Banc One assumed a leadership role in
3 assisting the Fund's personnel in making contacts
4 within the financial and small business community
5 in the Columbus area and Banc One also facilitated
6 communication within the bank with its lenders and
7 the Fund's personnel and issued a press release
8 introducing the Fund and advocating the Fund to the
9 Columbus area.
10 In summary, the Ohio Mezzanine Fund and
11 its $10 million of risk capital pool available to
12 small and mid-sized businesses in Ohio would not
13 exist today had it not been for the support and
14 leadership of Banc One.
15 We have every reason to believe that
16 that support and leadership will continue in the
17 future. Thank you.
18 MS. SMITH: Thank you very much. Mr. Traylor.
19 MR. TRAYLOR: Ms. Williams, Mr. Alvarez,
20 Ms. Smith, thanks very much for allowing me to be
21 here today to share the story of the Southern
22 Indiana Rural Development Project and the
23 partnership -- the strong partnership that we've
24 developed with Banc One over the past five years.
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1 The Southern Indiana Rural Development
2 Project or SIRDP is a not-for-profit organization,
3 501(c)3 organization that represents the 34
4 counties of southern Indiana.
5 We primarily focus our efforts in
6 southern Indiana on rural communities. And we seek
7 to basically improve the economies of those rural
8 communities through a number of different
9 mechanisms.
10 We were originally set up through an
11 initiative by Congressman Lee Hamilton in response
12 to a study by the Hudson Institute, a think tank in
13 Indianapolis, which basically had done a study on
14 rural communities and came back with the report
15 that primarily focused on all the bad things.
16 If you were to read the report, you would
17 look at yourself. And if you were living in
18 southern Indiana, you were wondering what the heck
19 you were doing there. And if you weren't living
20 there, you would certainly say I'm never going to
21 live there.
22 It was a very negative report. And the
23 Congressman did come back to us to form this group
24 to basically try to come up with action plans that
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1 address some of those negative aspects and at the
2 same time which tries to highlight some of the
3 positive things, which there's certainly plenty of
4 them in southern Indiana.
5 SIRDP accomplishes its mission through a
6 series of task forces, all of which are focused on
7 a particular issue ranging from telecommunications
8 and technology to leadership development to
9 education work force development as well as
10 housing.
11 It was through the housing task force that
12 I had my first working relationship with Banc One.
13 Early in 1996, SIRDP's Board of Directors was
14 trying to figure out a way to diversify our Board
15 and to bring in a lot of different membership
16 representing various factions, which we currently
17 at that time did not have representation from.
18 The financial institution was one that
19 was very lacking. And at that time the community
20 affairs director from the Fed out of St. Louis,
21 the Louisville branch, came to us with some
22 recommendations as to some firms, some financial
23 institutions that we might want to bring on board.
24 One of those firms was Banc One. And to
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1 this date, Banc One and PNC have maintained a very
2 strong involvement with our organization, while
3 several of the other organizations -- many of them
4 were smaller, but some of them were quite large
5 institutions -- have fallen to the wayside and have
6 not maintained that involvement.
7 And we certainly appreciate Banc One's
8 willingness to get involved from the onset and
9 since then to basically jump in on a number of
10 different issues that we've been focusing on in the
11 area of housing.
12 Banc One continues to this day to work
13 diligently with our task force, our housing task
14 force, to set housing need priorities for southern
15 Indiana.
16 Banc One has also supported SIRDP in a
17 financial manner as well. Through their
18 contributions, we've been able to leverage funds
19 from the Indiana Department of Commerce, the
20 Indiana Housing Finance Authority, Indiana
21 Department of Environmental Management and also
22 from the local endowment out of Indianapolis.
23 Quite honestly, without Banc One's support
24 and other organizations like them, our organization
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1 would not exist. As a not-for-profit, we rely upon
2 private contributions to maintain our existence.
3 And they've been very supportive of that.
4 Wow, time up, one minute already. One of
5 the most important initiatives that we focused on
6 over the past year is a program which is a home
7 buyer education assistance program.
8 It's called Live The Dream, Own A Home.
9 We've just created this. Banc One and their
10 representatives have been very involved with our --
11 with helping us to create the program, which is
12 modeled after a program in the state of Kentucky.
13 And without their assistance, we would not have
14 been able to do this.
15 This is a program that the Indiana Housing
16 Finance Authority has also adopted and which is
17 supported by organizations, community housing
18 development organizations, CDCs, community groups
19 and a number of different groups all over the state
20 of Indiana, not just within southern Indiana.
21 And we appreciate Banc One's assistance in that
22 respect.
23 We thank them for their willingness to
24 assist us and we support them in their endeavors in
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1 this respect as well. Thank you.
2 MS. SMITH: Thank you very much.
3 Mr. Wilkinson, thank you especially for
4 taking this later time and giving up your slot
5 earlier.
6 MS. WILKINS: No problem.
7 Good afternoon or, as the case will soon
8 be, good evening. My name is Tony Wilkinson. I am
9 the president and CEO of the National Association
10 of Government Guaranteed Lenders, Inc. And I like
11 to use our shorter name, which is NAGGL. It sure
12 is a lot easier.
13 We are headquartered in Stillwater,
14 Oklahoma. NAGGL represents those members of the
15 lending community who are active participants in
16 the Small Business Administration's 7(a) loan
17 program.
18 And during the last fiscal year, our
19 membership accounted for approximately 80 percent
20 of all of the SBA 7(a) loans made.
21 I appreciate the opportunity to appear
22 before you today and discuss Banc One's
23 participation in the SBA 7(a) loan program and with
24 our association.
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1 For the last few years, I have had the
2 privilege of working with Brian Burke, the national
3 SBA program manager for Banc One, and with other
4 Banc One representatives across the country.
5 Mr. Burke currently serves on the NAGGL
6 board of directors as our corporate secretary and,
7 as such, is a member of the NAGGL executive
8 committee.
9 I applaud the commitment Banc One has
10 made to SBA lending programs. In particular in
11 the 7(a) program, the bank has taken a leadership
12 role in two specific areas that I'd like to talk
13 about today.
14 First, Banc One was one of the limited
15 number of institutions chosen by SBA to pilot the
16 Fast Track loan program, a loan program
17 specifically designed to make smaller-sized loans.
18 That program has deemed to be highly -- was deemed
19 highly successful by the SBA. And the agency is
20 now in the process of expanding that program.
21 Banc One representatives have been
22 actively involved in the discussions with the SBA
23 on how to expand the Fast Track program and do so
24 in an efficient and responsible manner.
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1 Banc One has also been actively involved
2 in the special NAGGL committee, our task force on
3 lending to the underserved. This committee has
4 worked diligently with the SBA over the last
5 several months.
6 And we have come to a conclusion that
7 there are a number of markets with underserved
8 financing needs. These markets would include
9 businesses that; A, are owned by African Americans,
10 Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native
11 Americans, other minority groups, women, veterans
12 or handicapped individuals; B, those small
13 businesses that need financing for exporting; or,
14 C, are located in distressed urban and rural
15 areas.
16 An announcement on both the Fast Track
17 expansion and initiatives to increase the lending
18 to the underserved markets is tentatively scheduled
19 for September, so unfortunately I cannot go into
20 greater detail just yet, but let me reiterate that
21 Banc One representatives have played a major role
22 in development of both the Fast Track and
23 underserved lending initiatives.
24 Regarding post-merger SBA lending
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1 activity, Banc One's track record has been to turn
2 less than active SBA lending operations into higher
3 volume operations.
4 For instance, Banc One has taken recently
5 an Arizona bank's SBA lending operation which was
6 nowhere to be found in the top ten in lending
7 volume in the state to the number one SBA bank
8 lender in that state.
9 So in conclusion, Banc One has been a
10 valuable participant in the 7(a) loan program.
11 Banc One is also a valuable member of our
12 association. And Mr. Burke is held in high regard
13 amongst the NAGGL leadership and membership.
14 Banc One has made a long-term commitment
15 to the program and they have shown how to be
16 innovative with the SBA loan product.
17 Even at a time when SBA loan volume was
18 down nationally due to the nature of direct bank
19 lending, Banc One still aggressively participates
20 in SBA and NAGGL programs and activities.
21 I believe that in the markets where Banc
22 One operates, small businesses can expect to find a
23 professional committed SBA 7(a) lender ready to
24 help meet their long-term financing needs.
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1 Thank you for the opportunity to comment
2 today.
3 MS. SMITH: Thank you very much. Any
4 questions? We thank you again.
5 MR. ALVAREZ: Thank you very much for coming.
6 MS. SMITH: And look forward to your submitting
7 any written -- any additional comments by next
8 Thursday, the sooner the better.
9 And we're ready for Panel 18. We'll start
10 with Mr. Goldstein.