Tuesday, June 29, 2010

CitJ 101: Where to find bank TARP repayment info

An instructional post, whose local-news nut finding, possibly news to The Union readers (link) but not to Pelline readers (link), is that Nevada City's Citizens Bank did not pay its most recent quarterly TARP dividend on May 17. ("Citizens still is deferring TARP dividend payments to preserve capital" - JP*)

I went looking to find the government's data on TARP repayments for Citizens Bank - and found financialstability.gov/latest/reportsanddocs.html.
Within it, to see repayment info you want the latest "Dividends and Interest Reports" doc, which reports (pdf, 06/11/2010) the following information for Citizens, aka Citizens Bancorp, aka Citizens Bank of Northern California:
Program: CPP
Institution Citizens Bancorp
Instrument Type: Preferred Stock w/ Exercised Warrants
Notes: (none)
Payment Type: Dividend - Cumulative
Payment Frequency: Quarterly
Expected Payment Date: 5/17/2010
Actual Payment Date: None
Payment this Month: 0
Life-To-Date Payments: $ 223,571
Next Scheduled Payment Date: 8/16/2010
What's CPP, you ask?
"Capital Purchase Program (CPP) is a voluntary program in which the U.S. Government, through the Department of Treasury, invests in preferred equity securities issued by qualified financial institutions. Participation is reserved for healthy, viable institutions that are recommended by their applicable federal banking regulator." (link, more)

Here are details on the Citizens' TARP money received (which I pulled from a TARP Transaction Report on the Reports and Documents page):
Purchase Date: 12/23/2008
Investment Description: Preferred Stock w/ Exercised Warrants
Investment Amount: $10,400,000
Pricing Mechanism: Par

The terms "Investment" and "Purchase" meaning, we taxpayers bought it. And I concur with Steve Enos(here) that our money should buy a little more transparency.

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Other resources:
Originally I had some trouble finding the TARP repayment info ("Dividends and Interest Reports" didn't say "TARP repayment" to my brain, and I am no finance reporter) - but if I hadn't found it, I would have posted a "where can I find this information" question to Explain This - which would have helped even if it didn't yield an answer, being an effectve and much-appreciated pressure-relief valve. Arizona State's Reynolds Institute for Business Journalism would have been another likely resource - they do have tutorials.
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3 comments:

  1. Jenny Belknapp6/30/2010 3:42 PM

    My understanding is banks can, with the approval of the treasury partially or fully defer a TARP payment.

    Article about the number of institutions in arears: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/06/91-banks-miss-may-tarp-payment-68-banks.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anna Haynes7/08/2010 2:55 PM

    Thanks Jenny. But it doesn't seem like a good sign, to continue to do so for multiple payments.

    re credit unions, a URL for checking -
    "How healthy is this credit union?"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anna Haynes7/08/2010 3:02 PM

    More Citizens Bank data, comparing March 2009 to March 2010

    ReplyDelete

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