LITTLE ROCK — Metropolitan National Bank in Little Rock said Friday that it lost $2.4 million in the second quarter this year, its seventh-straight quarter of losses.
The private bank lost $32.5 million in the second quarter of last year and more than $80 million for all 2009.
Most of Metropolitan’s problems are connected to real-estate lending in Northwest Arkansas.
“While any loss is disappointing, our financial results are improving and our balance sheet is significantly more stable than it’s been over the last two years,” Lunsford Bridges, president and chief executive officer, said in a prepared statement.“The last two and a half years have been the most difficult and trying time that most financial institutions, both here and around the world, have ever experienced.”
Metropolitan is confident that the “tough decisions” it has made in the past 18 months “are starting to show a positive effect on our future results,” Bridges said in the statement.
The bank should return to profitability next year, Bridges said.
Metropolitan’s losses still are associated with its loans in Northwest Arkansas, said Susan Smith, the bank’s executive vice president. The losses are related to write downs for the bank’s foreclosed property in Northwest Arkansas, Smith said.
Metropolitan’s central Arkansas operations continue to be profitable, Smith said.
Metropolitan again failed to meet the required capital ratios, which are measures of the bank’s strength, that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency set for it when it sanctioned the bank in May 2008.
“Our intent is still to reach the capital [ratio levels],” Smith said. “There is still time to work through that.”
Despite its troubles, Metropolitan is not in such serious condition that there is a threat that regulators will close it, said Randy Dennis, president of DD&F Consulting Group of Little Rock, a bank consulting company.
“Trust me. There are a whole lot worse problem [banks] out there,” Dennis said.
Business, Pages 25 on 07/31/2010