Sebastian

3 Signs of a Bottom for Sovereign Bancorp

Greeting my good Freund ;-),

Nice article in times when clubbing of US-regional banks is so en vogue.
I really can't understand the doom and gloom about small banks while investors start to talk about a bottom in the big money-centers.
The regionals are in many cases better capitalized and hold a less dangerous loan portfolio than their bigger brethren. Plus there are still small banks out there, which are actually in the banking-business (borrow at 3, lend at 6, play golf at 3) rather than playing around with derivatives 'n stuff.

I just wanted to tell you (in amazon.com-lingo) that hence you are interested in Sovereign Bancorp., you might also like Mercantile Bank of Michigan (MBWM). They operating in an economically depressed region but have a rather low exposure to residential loans. MBWM still is "well capitalized" according to the equity to risk weighted assets-ratios and has acceptable levels of unperforming loans as well as 30 day+ - delinquencies. The bank is trading below half book value and experienced considerable insider buys from many of the companys' officers and directors.