Goodbye, Excel. Hello, EH.
Excel National Bank, a six-year-old Beverly Hills lender that had struggled with declining credit quality, last week announced an overhaul of its business, including the hiring of new management and a major shift in its lending focus. The bank also unveiled a new name, EH National Bank.
Peter Aharonyan, the bank’s newly hired chief executive, said EH plans to specialize in Armenian- and Lebanese-owned businesses in Los Angeles and Orange counties, in addition to mainstream customers.
“We are looking to focus on a few key underserved markets in our community,” said Aharonyan, who is Armenian American.
Excel, founded in 2005, had primarily focused on lending under the U.S. Small Business Administration program. As recently as last year, the small bank was the seventh largest SBA lender in Los Angeles, originating more than $40 million, more than many national banks.
However, the bank was “impacted by the downturn,” Aharonyan said, and many of its loans went bad. Last quarter, Excel reported an $8 million loss as more than $36 million of its government-backed loans were in nonaccrual status.
Aharonyan, who had served as chief executive of California First National Bank since 2003, was recruited to revitalize Excel and address its credit quality problems.
“We’re still going through that bubble of problem loans,” he said, “(but) we have seen the worst of it.”
The bank plans to continue making SBA loans, but that will no longer be its primary focus. Aharonyan said Middle Eastern businesses represent an underserved and potentially lucrative market since Lebanese-owned Cedars Bank was acquired in 2006.
Aharonyan said he is already thinking about growing the bank’s assets, which were just $189 million last quarter. He noted that the bank has healthy capital levels thanks to about $20 million that was invested in the bank this year, primarily by Kesao Fukae, a Japanese businessman who has held a stake in the bank since its founding.
As for the name, Aharonyan said that,
too, came from Fukae, who runs another business with those letters in the name: “It actually stands for excellence in human achievement.”
End Days
WesCorp, the massive corporate credit union in San Dimas that failed in 2009, looks like it will be gone before the month is out.
The National Credit Union Administration, the regulator overseeing the industry, said that it received four bids for WesCorp’s assets prior to the Nov. 4 deadline. It plans to pick a winner as soon as possible.
“It might be ambitious but our goal is by the end of November,” said NCUA spokesman David Small.
The agency restricted bidding to the roughly two dozen existing corporate credit unions, but it declined to name the institutions that submitted bids.
Unlike retail credit unions, which serve the public, corporate institutions provide services such as check-clearing and investing for other credit unions.
WesCorp, which has since been renamed Western Bridge Corporate Credit Union, had been one of the country’s largest corporate credit unions, with $23 billion in assets and 1,100 members. But it was seized by regulators after losing billions of members’ funds on bad investments.
The NCUA had previously tried to
recapitalize Western Bridge to keep it independent, but failed to raise the hoped-for $200 million.
Firm for the Flush
Got $50 million lying around? Well, you now have another reason to smile.
Wells Fargo & Co. this month unveiled Abbot Downing, a new boutique wealth management firm serving individuals and families with at least $50 million in investable assets.
The unit, named for a 19th century stagecoach builder, has offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as 12 other cities across the country. Abbot Downing, which manages $27.5 billion in assets, combines Wells Fargo’s existing family office and asset management businesses.
There are about 10,000 U.S. households worth at least $50 million, according to the firm.
The unit is currently operating, though the brand will not be officially launched until April.
C-Suite News
Bel Air Investment Advisors LLC, a wealth management firm in Century City, has hired Mark Tunney as senior vice president. … Teresa Freeborn, chief executive of El Segundo’s Xceed Financial Credit Union, has been elected vice chairman of the Credit Union Executives Society.
Staff reporter Richard Clough can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 251.
