Bank in financial straits
Kudos to National City Bank for their $8,500 sponsorship of the “Concerts at Storey Square” for the 2008 season. I wonder if the many local stockholders of the bank don’t wonder how the bank can be so beneficent considering their recent demise. This demise was marked by the recent drop in their stock price from the mid $30’s to a present $5 to $6. The demise is also marked by the dividend payments being virtually eliminated. The present dividend is so low that it must cost more to process it than it is worth.
Interested parties should avail themselves of articles in the Herald-Standard dated March 31, 2008 regarding the National City losses of the McCune Foundation of Pittsburgh, and the report of stockholders’ reactions at an annual meeting held in Cleveland on April 29 (Herald-Standard, April 30).
I’d most heartily recommend an article by Daniel Gross in the May 5 issue of Newsweek magazine titled “The Age of Grand Delusion.” It is devoted to this subject and is further evidence of National City’s sad condition. There is considerable attention paid to their desperate actions of April 28 when they sold $7 billion of a special stock issue, at the price of $5 per share, and I think they had to do it quickly in order to keep their doors open.
Roy F. Dayton
Uniontown