First Indiana Corp.’s announcement that it would be sold to Milwaukee-based Marshall & Ilsley Corp. for $529 million in cash
came just 17 days after sale discussions began. Banking observers have speculated for weeks that First Indiana acted fast
to cut a deal before it would have to report second-quarter results.
Just three years ago, Steve Alonso was at the top of his game. The veteran mortgage banker was a finalist for Ernst & Young’s Indiana entrepreneur of the year award, and his fast-growing company, Oak Street Mortgage, was ready ing for a $150 million initial public offering. Investors should feel fortunate the IPO never happened. Today, Oak Street sits in the evergrowing scrap heap of firms that failed amid the meltdown of the subprime-lending market. “I think we built a…
First Indiana Corp. announced poor second-quarter financial results Aug. 7-which raises this interesting question: Did the city’s biggest locally owned bank race to sell itself last month because the results otherwise would have caused its stock to tumble? Even before the earnings report, banking observers were abuzz that the $529 million sale to Milwaukee-based Marshall & Ilsley Corp. seemed rushed. While many expected First Indiana to sell eventually, CEO Robert Warrington had seemed hellbent on improving results first to drive…
Indiana, as you know, has not escaped the inevitable crush of consolidation in the banking industry. No one should have been surprised by the announcement that First Indiana Corp. was selling itself to an out-of-state bank, Milwaukee-headquartered Marshall & Isley Corp. In spite of the best efforts of M&I, The National Bank of Indianapolis, of which I am chairman of the board, will add business as a result of this transaction. Some of First Indiana’s customers prefer to deal with…
Huntington Bancshares Inc. entered the Indianapolis market in 1986 and since has led a relatively unassuming existence, barely cracking the top 10 in local deposit amounts and operating just a few dozen branches. So, the Columbus, Ohio-based bank is entering uncharted territory following its $3.6 billion acquisition of fellow Buckeye bank Sky Financial Group Inc. in Bowling Green. Huntington completed its purchase of Sky on July 2, making it the 24th-largest domestic bank in the United States in terms of…
Al Smith of Chase Bank doesn’t know Patricia Wells, but he is glad he was able to help the Indianapolis mother of five, if only indirectly. Wells closed on the purchase of a house on East Washington Street three months ago, thanks in no small part to two programs of the Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership, a two-decade-old not-for-profit that has helped hundreds of families realize the American Dream of homeownership. “I’m a single mother with five kids and I didn’t…
Not-for-profits that banked on consistent support from the banker down the street can no longer count on a tip of the top
hat, thanks to ever-larger mergers among institutions that have changed the dynamic of their charitable giving.
Huntington Bancshares is giving up its local headquarters in Capital Center downtown now that it has completed its $3.6 billion purchase of Sky Financial Group. The 100 employees based at Capital Center, 201 N. Illinois St., will move to a Sky-owned office building at 45 N. Pennsylvania St. Sky bought the building last year as part of its $321 million purchase of locally based Union Federal Savings Bank. Bowling Green, Ohio-based Sky announced it was being purchased by Columbus, Ohio-based…
If First Indiana Corp. was looking to pull off a sale quickly, Milwaukee-based Marshall & Ilsley Corp. was a natural place
to turn. First Indiana CEO Robert B. Warrington had been doing deals with the bank since he took the helm from Marni McKinney
in 2006. Warrington also is a friend and golfing buddy of M&I CEO Mark Furlong.
First Indiana Corp.’s new marketing campaign features a superhero sporting an orange cape and a white jumpsuit with the First
Indiana logo. But First Indiana Man is just a means to introduce the real star of the bank’s most aggressive marketing and
account-growth effort in a decade: a free checking account the bank hopes will generate 20,000 new accounts in the next year.
Here’s one way to send your company’s revenue through the roof: Push your product into 70 countries around the world. That’s easier said than done, of course. But it’s exactly the path Polymer Technology Systems Inc. took to help quadruple sales of its cholesterol-checking device in the last three years. How Indianapolis-based PTS pulled off the feat shows how even small companies in Middle America can become global enterprises in today’s economy. In fact, the possibility of worldwide expansion is…
You usually have to swallow your pride when it comes time to forecast the growth of the Indiana economy. That’s because no matter what your heart says, your head tells you what the best forecast will be. That is the one that pulls up well short of growth in the rest of the country. There are a lot of talented people working hard around the state trying to change that. And if the full truth be told, most of our…
Undeterred by stepped-up competition and tough margins, Fort Wayne-based Star Financial Bank is building an Indianapolis regional hub and has lined up land for four new locations. The privately held bank launched an Indianapolis-area expansion effort in 2001, and now has seven offices here-including three in Fishers, one in Carmel and one in Noblesville. The latest expansion salvo includes 25,000 square feet of leased space within an office building under construction at Keystone at the Crossing, next door to the…
In 1993, Dan Yogodnik started a business with a friend that leased out exotic cars for special occasions. The biggest hurdle the partners encountered was lining up insurance for the cars. That experience spurred Yogodnik, who had been working in the banking industry, to start his own insurance firm. “If we had our own insurance agency, then we wouldn’t have to chase all over the country [for the niche policies],” he said. What started out as a side business targeting…
The dreaded bank workout department isn’t what it used to be for marginal borrowers, say two Indianapolis veterans who have watched the industry for decades. Until a couple of years ago, banks still were willing to help struggling companies through tough patches by restructuring loans and offering guidance in finding their way out of the woods. Now, banks are much quicker to cut off borrowers, said Dave Hamernik, a partner in Hamernik LLC. Hamernik, one of the region’s most seasoned…
I once spent a day serving as an Allen County election official. I was 20-something. I worked for Fort Wayne’s mayor. And on Election Day, the mayor expected us to work the polls. For the sake of nostalgia and monotonyinterrupting conversations, I got myself assigned to the precinct at my high school. On the appointed Tuesday, I showed up at 5:15 a.m., did my voter-watching/guardagainst-shenanigans-by-the-other-party thing for 12 hours and helped with votecounting for two hours after that. Then I…
Indiana bank stocks have taken a beating on Wall Street over the past year, lagging behind larger peers as the entire industry rides out an unfavorable environment. Shares of Indiana’s 16 publicly traded banks dropped an average of 3 percent from May 4, 2006, to May 4, 2007, according to research by Carmel-based banking consulting firm Renninger & Associates LLC. Meanwhile, the nationwide SNL Financial bank index was up 4.4 percent. During the same period, the Dow Jones industrial average…
Many Hoosier stocks are on a tear, posting year-to-date gains rivaling the numbers we saw in the frothy late 1990s, before the Internet bubble burst. But market analysts say the comparison stops there. The companies posting gains are old-line manufacturers like Cummins Inc., not dot-com startups built on hype. And the appreciation is built upon a solid foundation-rapid increases in profit. Indeed, New York-based Citigroup noted that corporate profits are up 115 percent since the last recession ended in the…
The banking industry is turning to the next generation of online security to thwart cyberthieves, and an Indianapolis information technology consulting firm is trying to stay at the forefront of the movement. Locally based Catalyst Technology Group has received a contract from BioPassword Inc., a security-software company based in Issaquah, Wash., to install keystroke authentication systems at financial institutions throughout the United States. Keystroke authentication is among the latest offerings from the field of biometrics-the measurement and analysis of unique…
On March 30, a U.S. Court of Appeals issued a decision that represents a tremendous victory for registered investment advisers, individual investors and a defeat for big brokerage firms such as Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, and Goldman Sachs. The Financial Plan- Association filed the lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission, arguing that the SEC in 1999 had exceeded its authority in creating an exemption from investment adviser registration under the Investment Advisers Act for stockbrokers who charge asset-based fees…
