Sterling Bancshares, Inc. F3Q08 (Qtr End 09/30/08) Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-10-28 17:04:09.0

Tags: Bank, Call Transcript, Earnings, Fraud, Sterling Bancshares Inc., Financial Services, Litigation, Business Operations, Seeking Alpha, Bank, Call Transcript, Earnings, Fraud, Sterling Bancshares Inc., Financial Services, Litigation, Business Operations, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. [Operator instructions]. And the first question does come from John Pancari with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

John Pancari

Good morning.

Downey Bridgwater

Good morning John.

John Pancari

Can you talk a little bit about the auto dealer loans, and I know you indicated customers fraud at several customers I mean how was -- can you give us some more detail on this fraud and is it something that was part of a certain group -- lending group at the bank that generated these issues and can you give more detail there?

Downey Bridgwater

Sure. The auto dealer loans that Sterling had -- and we start with second part of your question came from acquisition that Sterling had made over the years lot of community banks for some reason are attracted to making floor plan lines and dealer direct lines and no financing lines for used car dealerships, and frankly, it’s fairly high risky lending and in fact, it’s probably the most risky lending that we have in the bank. And at a period of time, we were up to almost $90 million of these and we worked them down to -- as I mentioned down to around 30 in fact, we got some pay offs just recently so we are closer to the $24 million range right now today. So, we’ve been working to get these things out of the bank as fast as possible. These types of borrowers generally have to be watched quite closely their -- that the industry itself is typically fraught with fraud. And, we actually don’t like this kind of lending we’ve been working our way down and out of this for the last few years. And we are kind of down to the last few pieces now. We consolidated it from all the branches that we had and all the banks that we had acquired into one particular group and we are now watching that very closely and as I said working it down and out. These charge-offs came from two different key relationships in Dallas, with one small and another one in San Antonio actually. So, we’ve -- and there were different types of fraud frankly related in all three of these one of which is the dealer just sold all the automobiles and didn’t pay down the line, so we had to work that down and out and that was a significant loss and then others had a very similar situation where frankly the cars were sold out of trust and proceeds never came to the bank and we could not find the automobiles. We only found a few. So, that’s part of the risk of this kind of lending and we don’t like it at all, and as I said we are working right down and out of this and we have various different opportunities to move these out of the bank just as I mentioned this morning and we hope to be down to the $10 million to $12 million range by the end of this year and then we will work the rest of this out of here hopefully in the next few quarters. But, it’s our intent to get out of this business completely as quickly as we can and minimize future losses. So, that’s kind of the story.

 

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