| Protest of MVB
Leads To Merger Failure and
Uncorrected Lies about Activist
Investor
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon MVB File
SOUTH BRONX NY,
May 13 –
Alongside the wrongdoing by
big banks from JPMorgan Chase
to KeyCorp, there are other
also dubious proposed merger
by smaller banks and
predators.
Fair Finance
Watch is on the lookout, with
Inner City Press on the FOIA,
and filed this sample on MVB
Bank:
Dear Chair
Powell, Secretary Misback and
others in the
FRS: This is
a request for a full copy of,
and a timely first comment on,
the Applications of MVB
Financial Corp., Fairmont,
West Virginia; to acquire
Integrated Financial Holdings,
Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina,
and thereby indirectly acquire
West Town Bank & Trust,
North Riverside, Illinois, and
acquire voting shares of West
Town Payments, LLC, Raleigh,
North Carolina, "and
more."
Fair Finance
Watch has been reviewing West
Town Bank including its 2021
HMDA data not taken into
account in any CRA exam and
finds it troubling. FFW in
looking into MVB Bank find its
offers of banking for gaming,
but for CRA questions, not
even an email address, only a
snail mail address. This is
not a best practice, far from
it.
In
terms of HMDA data, in 2021,
West Town Bank made 319
mortgage loans to whites with
seven denials. Meanwhile to
African Americans it made only
TWENTY FIVE loans, while
denying five applications. A
referral should be made to the
DOJ for fair lending
violations.
MVB, proposing to buy West
Town Bank including its hemp
lending, is engaged in gaming
lending, fintechs - but has
not put its CRA file online or
even available by emailing."
Since
filing, MVB provided Fair
Finance Watch with what it
calls its 271-page CRA file
(for some reason, only "as of
April 2022") which we put on
DocumentCloud here
to make it public as all CRA
files should be, and the Fed
has now informed Inner City
Press that MVB withdrew its
application.
MVB was quoted,
lying, that it was because of
"an activist investor"
challenging the CRA rating:
"Larry Mazza, CEO of the $3.6
billion-asset MVB Financial,
said in an interview Wednesday
that "a activist investor in
IFHI had challenged the
company's Community
Reinvestment Act rating. With
regulators exceptionally busy
managing the regional bank
failures, MVB and IFHI
determined it could prove
difficult to resolve that
matter efficiently." The
publication never fact-checked
Mezza. We'll have more on
this.
***
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