CHICAGO: An engineer by profession turned hotelier and then a banker, Chandrakant Patel, also known as Chan Patel, has now joined the elite club of billionaires in USA with the recent acquisition of a Chicago-based top most Black owned bank – Seaway Bank and Trust of Chicago.
It is not the charm of being a part of billionaire club that is the motivating factor for Chan Patel. He wants to have his boots on the ground and raise his bar of success with hard work and ingenuity for the good of the society and the community at large. It is the same spirit that motivates his two sons – Rajan and Sushil – who help him to nudge the family owned and operated State Bank of Texas to grow bigger and bigger. The major plank is consolidation of the main ship – SBT – and make it bigger by acquiring failed banks across the country and reviving their fortunes
It is this consideration that induced the Patels to acquire a $310 million assets and $304 million deposit Seaway Bank and Trust in Chicago early this year This was close on the heels of picking up a failed $1.2 billion asset National Republic Bank, also in Chicago, two years ago.
Seaway Bank is partially liquidated but Patels still hold on to its assets and an O’Hare Airport facility. Despite the partial shedding of Seaway Bank, the conglomeration of the Patel banks are close to $ one billion in assets, easily placing them as the biggest Indian American bankers in the country
SBT as such keeps on doing good as evidenced by results recently announced for the year ending 2016 by SBT President Sushil Patel. The Bank notched a net profit of $43 million on its total assets of $740 million. It is ranked #1 in ROAA in the country among all banks – between #100 million and $ One billion assets. It is among the top one percent of peer banks for NIM (Net Interest Margin) and efficiency ratio and among the top 2 percent of peer banks for Tier 1 Capital ratio.
Chan Patel and his team have not let the shareholders down too and helped them share the bank’s good fortune. In fact they have distributed close to $200 million in profits since its inception 30 years ago. The Bank was set up with $2 million investment by Chan Patel and his friends, including relatives. And they are happy that Chan urged them to invest in a venture that was new to him and to them.
The SBT success is its focus on lending to the hospitality industry. The stance coupled with hard work and ingenuity has helped the bank move higher and higher year after year even when the economy at times faced hard times. “When loans start experiencing difficulties, it is the time to get out from behind the desk,” says Sushil Patel. “The buck stops with us so far as all decision making and losses are concerned since we do not have any layers to go through.
This allows us to be a more nimble bank.”
This philosophy underlines the success that the bank has notched so far.
Ramesh Soparawala
India Post News Service
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