Correction: US Bank is the trustee for an unidentified owner that holds trust preferred securities in Acme Holding Co., parent company of Allied Bank of Mulberry. This article incorrectly identified the federal government as the owner of the trust preferred securities.
Blackmon Auctions of Little Rock completed its sale of properties owned by Allied Bank of Mulberry and its parent company, Acme Holding Co., on Friday, Thomas Blackmon, president of the auction company, said Saturday.
Blackmon declined to indicate whether all properties were sold.
"I'd rather stay silent and let [Allied Bank President Alex Golden] and the bank speak for what happened this week," Blackmon said.
Messages left for Golden on Saturday were not returned.
In April 2014, Acme Holding filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Last week, the case was converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy.
Blackmon Auctions offered Allied Bank's properties for sale from Tuesday through Friday.
The properties included 440 acres on Interstate 40 near Altus that once belonged to Wiederkehr Wine Cellars Inc.; buildings where Allied has branches; residential lots in Shannon Hills, Alexander, Hot Springs and Springdale; homes in Little Rock, Benton, Malvern, Hot Springs and Mansfield; and commercial property in Alma and Fayetteville.
Allied Bank has been in financial trouble since before May 2012, when it was sanctioned by its regulator, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. At that time, the bank had $175 million in assets.
Acme, which owns 100 percent of Allied Bank, and the bank's employee stock ownership plan also were included in the federal sanction.
The bank's problems were related to the weakening economy and to loans made to Kevin Lewis, a former Little Rock attorney convicted of bank fraud in 2011, Golden said at the time. Lewis' scheme led to the closure of First Southern Bank of Batesville and cost other banks in the state several million dollars.
Allied Bank made loans totaling $3.25 million to Lewis, Golden said. The bank lost a significant amount of that money but not all, Golden said.
Acme had $12.22 million in assets, all in personal property, and $11.4 million in liabilities, including $7.8 million in secured claims, $164,922 in unsecured priority claims and $3.4 million in unsecured nonpriority claims.
Among its debts, Acme listed $2 million to Axys Capital Management, an investment advisory firm in Austin, Texas; and $1.4 million to Southern Bank of Poplar Bluff, Mo., which took over First Southern.
Allied Bank had assets of $140 million when Acme filed for bankruptcy.
Since then, Allied's assets have shrunk further. It had total assets of $107.19 million in the first quarter this year, down 22.4 percent from $138.09 million in assets in the first quarter of last year. That was the largest decline in assets for banks in the state for the first quarter.
Allied had $30,000 in net income in the first quarter, one of the lowest levels for banks in the state. Its return on assets was 0.11 percent, also one of the lowest in the state.
Since Allied Bank is an asset for Acme, it likely means Acme will have to sell it, said Randy Dennis, president of DD&F Consulting Group, a bank consulting firm in Little Rock.
"I think it will be a hard sale," Dennis said. "I think they have asset problems and loan problems."
Acme wasn't able to pay its debts, Dennis said. It wasn't able to pay the federal government for a trust preferred securities loan or pay off a loan from Chambers Bancshares of Danville, Dennis said.
Chambers lent Acme $3 million in September 2010 and $2 million in December 2010, according to the bankruptcy filing. The trust preferred debt is $3.3 million, according to the filing.
"I think [Chambers] was going to foreclose on the loan, so to keep [Chambers] from foreclosing on the loan and taking [Allied Bank], they put [Acme] in bankruptcy," Dennis said. "It's going to be interesting to see what happens."
Metro on 07/26/2015