I am Late on Bank Failure Friday

We had the first bank failure of the year, Republic First Bank in Philadelphia, PA.

Here is the  Full FDIC list.

What is interesting is that it appears that this is the 3rd bank that the bank President, Vernon Hill has run into the ground, and he has a long history of self dealing, nepotism and straight out weirdness.

Why has he not already been banned by the FDIC or the SEC?

Vernon Hill’s Commerce Bancorp was about to open its first New York City branch in 2001 when his wife, Shirley, called wanting to know whether dogs could be allowed inside.

Shirley Hill, also the branch designer, had been stopped from bringing the couple’s Yorkshire terrier, Sir Duffield, into other banks.

Vernon Hill, the bank’s founder and chief executive, declared it “just another stupid bank rule” and launched a campaign to encourage dogs to visit Commerce.

Hill, now 78 years old, thought a lot of bank rules were stupid. At the three different lenders he ran over the past 50 years, he wanted to upend how consumers bank.

Oh, boy, what a departure from those stodgy old dull bankers.

This is not a good thing.  We want our bankers to be dull.

The exciting ones get bailed out by the FDIC.

………

But the rules also had a way of catching up to Hill. He was fired from Commerce after regulators complained about conflicts of interest, including paying his wife’s design firm millions of dollars for architecture and marketing services. He left Metro Bank in the U.K. when an accounting scandal erupted.

Where the F%$# were regulators?  He has a long track record of corruption or incompetence, probably both, dating back to at least 2007.

His latest project, Republic First Bancorp in Philadelphia, was seized by regulators last weekend, after shareholders had ousted Hill in a last-ditch effort to save the bank. 

Republic First, which did business as Republic Bank across the mid-Atlantic region, was the fourth notable banking collapse since the start of 2023. In the wake of the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and the similarly named First Republic, Republic First came under pressure for some of the same missteps. 

Each tried to grow quickly but found itself overexposed to risks as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Fixed-rate securities they bought plummeted in value at the same time customers left to chase higher deposit payouts.

It appears that it's always someone else who is left holding the bag, in this case, the US tax payers by way of the FDIC.

This guy is a looter with a good sales pitch.  Why he is not under criminal investigation right now is beyond me.