Banking Law

Due to holiday travel, this blog will be off the air until next week. Before I head out, I want to clean one item out of the "to blog on" box before I take off for parts unknown.

I received an inquiry today from observant reader Peggy Carraway, a project analyst at a credit union in Virginia, who points out the amazing similarity in two recent press releases from banks paying back their TARP investments.

Recently you have posted two nearly identical statements attributed to two different bank executives. The sources listed in each of your posts do not link or lead one to the source of these statements, and an internet search does not uncover such a press release by either of these executives. Can you explain?

From April 7:

"When we decided to accept funds under this program, we believed we were the type of healthy bank that could employ the funds in the manner consistent with the goals initially set out by the Congress and the Treasury," Douglas J. Leech, Centra's chairman and chief executive, said in a press release March 24. However, "we believe recent actions, interpretations and commentary regarding various aspects of the program place Centra at an unacceptable competitive disadvantage.

From March 31:

"When we decided to accept funds under this program, we believed we were the type of healthy bank that could employ the funds in the manner consistent with the goals initially set out by Congress and the Treasury in supporting the expansion of credit to the markets we serve," Byrd said in a press release when Iberia announced its plan to exit Tarp.

"We believe recent actions, interpretations, and commentary regarding various aspects of the program places our company at an unacceptable competitive disadvantage. Our board of directors has determined that continued participation in this program is no longer in the best interest of our company and its shareholders."

No, I can't explain the coincidence definitively. As I explained to Ms. Carraway, these similarities escaped my attention, inasmuch as my blogging is generally undertaken while watching "Dancing With The Stars," where I suffer whiplash every time Edyta Sliwinska or Cheryl Burke glides by barely covered by what appears to be a wide belt. Thus, I miss the most obvious occurrences and, instead, tend to focus solely on the bizarre and irrelevant. I suppose the two banks could have retained the same public relations and/or law firm to assist them in drafting public statements. The firm had a pat way of putting the case that they liked and, by golly, they were going to stick to that way no matter whose mouth the words were supposed to be coming out of.

Alternatively, the second bank out of the blocks might have liked the way the first bank stated its position and decided not to reinvent the wheel. I remember once doing a branch sale with the largest bank in the country, and they presented me with their "standard form record retention agreement," which was an eight page form that I had drafted two years earlier from scratch for another client. They must have seen it, liked it, and decided to adopt as their very own. I told them they I not only accepted their form without changes, but thought it represented the finest piece of legal draftsmanship I had ever encountered. They humbly accepted my praise.

As the late Oscar Levant (one of my personal favorite quippers of all time) once observed on The Tonight Show, "Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism."

Have a good holiday.