ANB Failure Proves Costly

SPRINGDALE — The failure of Roger’s-based ANB Financial bank has cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $819.4 million as of March 31, the agency said.

But in terms perhaps less tangible, the region has paid in lost jobs, vacant real estate and a host of charitable contributions lost when the bank ceased operations.

Federal regulators descended upon ANB Financial a year ago, locked the doors, deemed the bank insolvent and sold its $235.9 million in local deposits to Pulaski Bank and Trust.

Pulaski Bank — through its parent company Iberiabank — purchased eight of the nine ANB branches. More than 200 people lost their jobs. Iberiabank retained 60 of ANB Financial’s branch employees, according to Beth Ardoin, spokeswoman for the bank.

“That was about the number working in the branches at the time of the purchase. However, we did not retain any of the mortgage company employees, corporate back-office staff or executives,” Ardoin said.

ANB and its subsidiaries employed around 283 at the time of its failure, according the bank’s last quarterly filing with the FDIC.

via The Morning News

Affiliated Foods Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Affiliated Foods Southwest Inc., a wholesale food distribution company, said it filed voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday.

The company employs 530 people. Affiliated said the governor’s dislocated worker task force will begin meeting with employees “at once” to provide assistance.

Workers were seen leaving Affiliated’s warehouse on Monday with boxes of personal belongings. None would speak on the record, but most said they were taking belongings home in anticipation of the company closing its doors.

Affiliated operates corporate retail stores, including Harvest Food and Piggly Wiggly locations, with 900 employees. The company said it is now selling those stores. Some stores are planning to close, according to report Monday by Arkansas Business news partner Today’s THV.

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Lehman Files Biggest Bankruptcy Case as Suitors Balk

Sept. 15 Bloomberg — Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, succumbed to the subprime mortgage crisis it helped create in the biggest bankruptcy filing in history.

The 158-year-old firm, which survived railroad bankruptcies of the 1800s, the Great Depression in the 1930s and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management a decade ago, filed a Chapter 11 petition with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan today. The collapse of Lehman, which listed more than $613 billion of debt, dwarfs WorldCom Inc.’s insolvency in 2002 and Drexel Burnham Lambert’s failure in 1990.

Lehman was forced into bankruptcy after Barclays Plc and Bank of America Corp. abandoned takeover talks yesterday and the company lost 94 percent of its market value this year. Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld, who turned the New York-based firm into the biggest underwriter of mortgage-backed securities at the top of the U.S. real estate market, joins his counterparts at Bear Stearns Cos., Merrill Lynch & Co. and more than 10 banks that couldn’t survive this year’s credit crunch.

Lehman Files Biggest Bankruptcy Case as Suitors Balk – Bloomberg