Don't Look at Us
The turmoil at the Irvine, Calif., subprime lender New Century Financial Corp. has been felt in financial markets around the world, and in Dunn, N.C. — population 10,000.All the headlines about the troubles at New Century, whose stock was delisted Tuesday by the New York Stock Exchange, have forced John Q. Shaw Jr. to issue two press releases in the past week to tell uneasy customers and investors that his $554 million-asset community banking company, New Century Bancorp, is not the California subprime lender.
"We're New Century Bank, and we've got a lot of customers that don't read on [in news reports] to see that it says New Century Financial of Irvine, Calif., so we're getting a lot of confusion," Mr. Shaw, the president and chief executive of New Century Bancorp, said Thursday after issuing the second press release.
"It's taking a lot of time of our people just answering the questions," he said.
It's not the first time the California company has brought Mr. Shaw grief. In September 2005, New Century Financial entered North Carolina by acquiring Royal Bank of Canada's RBC Mortgage Co., which had been part of RBC Centura Banks Inc., then based in Rocky Mount. The Irvine company brought a copyright challenge against Mr. Shaw's mortgage unit, New Century Mortgage, and he agreed to change its name to NC Mortgage.
New Century of Irvine declined to comment Thursday.
Odd Hours
Mike McMahon, a Sandler O'Neill & Partners LLP analyst in San Francisco for nine years, has moved on — a victim, in part, of the three-hour time difference between his hometown and his firm's headquarters in New York.This week Mr. McMahon, 49, joined Financial Stocks Inc., a 12-year-old Cincinnati investment firm which manages $6 billion. He was hired to open a San Francisco office and "develop their private equity business in the western United States," he said in an interview Monday.
Though he enjoyed covering firms like Bank of Hawaii Corp. and Greater Bay Bancorp for Sandler O'Neill, Mr. McMahon said the time difference was a factor in his decision. "Being on the West Coast, the grind of equity research takes its toll when you have to get up somewhere between 3 and 4 in the morning every day."
In his new job, he will search for small banks and thrifts that would be candidates for private investments of $5 million to $15 million. The job, he says, takes his sell-side analyst experience a step further.
"It's one thing to recommend a stock, and it's another to make an investment of X million into the name and monitor the progress of the company and hopefully come to a successful conclusion three to five years out. That's going to be exciting," he said.
