Board Members of Failed Louisiana Bank Face FDIC Bans

Several members of the board of the failed First NBC Bank have been banned from the banking industry by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) or been fined.

In a series of FDIC actions published late last week, seven former board members of the New Orleans, Louisiana bank were banned from working in the industry.

These individuals included James Roddy, Hermann Moyse III, Stephen Petagna, Herbert Anderson Jr, Richard Wilkinson, and Grish Roy Pandit. Dale Atkins, another former board member, was banned from the industry and fined $5,000.

Two more former board members, John French and Leon Giorgio Jr, were not banned but were each fined $7,500.

In each case, the individuals neither admitted nor denied any of the charges, according to the FDIC. All nine were accused of not responding “adequately to concerns expressed by the FDIC as one of the bank’s regulators”, according to the regulatory notices.

For the banned individuals, the FDIC said this behavior “constituted a breach that caused the bank to suffer or likely suffer loss and was done with continuing disregard for the safety or soundness of the bank”.

French and Giorgio’s regulatory notices claimed that their behavior “constituted a breach that caused the bank to suffer or likely suffer more than minimal loss”.

First NBC Bank was closed by the FDIC in April 2017, which sold its assets to Mississippi-based Whitney Bank.

The bank’s founder and former president and CEO Ashton Ryan Jr was found guilty of 46 counts of fraud in February this year.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana detailed in a press release at the time that Ryan had “conspired to defraud First NBC Bank through a variety of schemes”. These included “disguising the true financial status of certain borrowers” and making false statements to auditors and examiners.

None of the board members have been accused of fraud, and the Attorney’s Office press release said Ryan actively concealed the bank’s financial position from the board.

First NBC Bank’s collapse cost the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund almost $1 billion.