CHICAGO: A Dallas based Indian businessman, Chandrakant Patel, has proved his business acumen one more time by lifting his State Bank of Texas (SBT) in Dallas to top the list of best performing community banks of 2014 in the entire country.
SBT had very recently had taken over a Chicago based National Republic Bank owned by another Indian businessman and, according to analysts, the strong performance of the bank is attributable to its strong existing platform combined with the purchase of NRB of Chicago in October 2014
SNL Financial released its annual ranking of 2014’s top 100 best performing banks with assets between $500M and $5B. Of these, State Bank of Texas earned the top place. SBT ended 2014 with total assets of $835 million, a return on assets (ROA) of 11.43% (tax-adjusted of 12.28% due to Sub S status), a return on equity (ROE) of 55.29%, and an astronomical Tier 1 Risk Based Capital Ratio of 23.29%.
SNL Financial headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia, is the premier provider of breaking news, financial data and expert analysis on business sectors critical to the global economy: Banking- financial services, insurance, real estate, energy and media/communications. SNL Financial was originally founded as “S&L Securities” in New Jersey in 1987 with an initial focus on the savings and loan industry. New Jersey statutes forbade the incorporation of a non-bank with “S&L” in the official company name. So the “&” was replaced with an “N” to create “SNL.” It is serving more than 5,000 client companies and 100,000 users worldwide
The continued success of State Bank of Texas (SBT) is in no small measure due to the strong leadership by the Patel family and its continued lending focus in the lodging industry. Chan Patel, President and CEO, states “We know what we know and we know what we don’t know. That is a key to our lending startegy.”
Even before the acquisition of the NRB, in 2014, State Bank of Texas was named as the top performing community bank in the United States by Sageworks based on an analysis of more than 4,500 banks that had between $100 million and $10 billion in assets.
The Patel management of NRB has also done wonders with NRB in that a losing propsotiion that induced an intervention by FDIC and the federal banking authorities has turned into a money making business.
In a talk to this paper, Chan Patel pointed out that NRB has been in green now making a reasonably good amount of profit at $3 million a month. The Bank now fully shifted to mini-India Town on Devon Ave has been slowly moving back to its fresh lending operations which were put on a hold for a while.
Chan Patel said that the most important factor that has helped the Bank’s turnaround can be attributed to an overhauling of its operaitons. The bank has hugely cut down its bad loans and has now imrpoved refurbishing from the past ledings. The bank has resumed entertaining new loan applications from small and big businesses, inlcuding hospitality industry.
Yet another contributory factor is cost cutting. SBT in Chicago fully shifted its headquarter to its Devon facility and this had resulted in huge saving in rent. The staff is also trimmed. ” We hope to do much better in coming months,” said Chan Patel with huge confidence.
About State Bank of Texas and its Executives
SBT was founded by Chan Patel in 1987 with the vision of supporting the entrepreneurship of other fellow Indian immigrants here. It has a strong niche lending focus in the lodging industry. Under the leadership and guidance of Chan Patel, a graduate of Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University graduate programs, and the expertise and execution of his two sons, Sushil Patel and Rajan Patel, Patels operate the bank with a strong family ethic and assist other immigrants in obtaining loans in order to build their business and realise their American dreams. His sons joined in 2004 after obtaining degrees in Business and Finance (Sushil – an MBA from the University of Chicago; and Rajan – a Masters in Banking from the Southwest Graduate School of Banking).
Ramesh Soparawala
India post News Service
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