An old banking story

To set this up, this story involved negotiations between two black-owned banks, Seaway Bank and Highland Community Bank that would have resulted in a buyout. Both banks are located on 87th Street one near Cottage Grove and the other just a couple of block west of Ashland. In any case ultimately these banks couldn't come to an agreement and Seaway and Highland are still separate banks today.

I just wanted to pull a quote from this article about the role black-owned banks play in the market. This article was originally published in Crain's back in 2005 and the link is at the Woodstock Institute:

If a deal is completed, it will be a reprieve for African-Americans concerned a year ago about the potential loss of all the city's black-owned banks, as both Seaway and Highland were entertaining offers. Ratcheting up the concern at the time was the November 2003 sale of black-owned Community Bank of Lawndale to Asian-owned International Bank of Chicago, a move that prompted a brief flurry of protests in Lawndale's West Side market.

''Minority-owned banks often have more of a sense of the market and are able to tailor products more specifically to minority communities,'' says Marva Williams, senior vice-president at the Woodstock Institute, a Chicago think tank on financial issues in low-income communities. ''I think a (black-owned) bank is sort of symbolic of advancement and the potential to play a part in the mainstream financial system.''

BTW, Community Bank of Lawndale is now Covenant Bank under new ownership from International Bank of Chicago. Once again there are now four black-owned banks in the city of Chicago.