It's what we like about Buffalo. I'm referring to hometown banks like M&T that have withstood the financial crisis, coming out relatively unscathed and ready to do business. That's one of the reasons that Forbes has profiled the bank - as Forbes staff writer puts it, "Buffalo may be miles away from New York City as a financial capital, but when it comes to putting money to work in the U.S. banking sector John Fox prefers the former to the latter.
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"Fox, who co-manages Fenimore Asset Management's $700 million Value Fund, owns regional banks as a play on improving U.S. growth without the headaches that come along with the "Too Big To Fail" crowd. Among the names he likes is Buffalo-based M&T Bank.
"With $78 billion in assets -- a far cry from the $1 trillion-plus controlled by the likes of Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo -- M&T is a solid size but hardly a giant in the industry. That puts it in something of a sweet spot for both organic growth and acquisitions."
Since M&T is looking like the hometown hero here, I think that it should celebrate a bit... the perfect way to do that is by funding a significant project in need. This might be wishful thinking, and I'm sure that we all have our wish lists for projects that we would like to see move forward.
If I were to pick the project that I believe would benefit most from M&T backing, it would be Horsefeathers Community Market - a high profile market that would boost West Side properties, offer super healthy food to Greater Buffalonians, reinvigorate a prime historic building, and help to grow a number of start-up businesses.
Remember what the owner of K9 Connection said about the importance of local banks lending to host communities? M&T has already proved its worth in the eyes of Forbes. M&T has also been a major, longstanding building block of Buffalo. Now it's time to roll up the sleeves and protect local community assets by continuing to invest in businesses and developers with proven track records. After all, M&T is Buffalo's Main Street (not Wall Street) bank.
They should have let wall street crash and burn instead of bailing them out with billions of federal taxpayer dollars.
Its the well managed local, regional and midsize banks which were well managed that should have been allowed to rise and grow to their next level.
Today Wall Street would have moved to Buffalo.
I love regional banks and I wish our Federal Government would avail itself of the anti-trust laws that already exist to cut banks down to size. Regional banks have a much greater vested interest in the health, development, and stability of their home regions, which I think leads to smarter decision-making.
That said, it wasn't just 'Wall Street' banks that were in trouble a few years ago. All kinds of commercial banks that hold the savings of tens (if not hundreds) of millions of Americans were in peril. These include banks like National City, Wachovia, Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. The Federal Government needed to get involved to make sure these banks didn't fail. As commercial banks and investment banks have become interwoven through various incestual investments, you couldn't really come to the aid of commercial banks without also coming to the aid of the investment banks. They should have never allowed investment banks and commercial banks to sell to one another. Prior to 1998, the Glass-Steagall prevented such transactions.
I should also point out, that in many cases, the Federal Government's action to prevent a bank from failing was simply to force its sale to an even larger bank. For instance, National City was sold to PNC. That was okay in the short term, but in the long term, I feel these banks need broken back apart.