When the first signs of the mortgage crisis emerged in the spring of 2007, Platinum Community Bank President Michael Linsner moved quickly, lining up a deal to sell the small Rolling Meadows lender.
Florida-based Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. completed the acquisition last week, infusing Platinum with $10 million in badly needed capital and taking the bank's bad loans onto its books.
That averted a capital crunch at Platinum, which topped a list compiled for Crain's by SNL Financial of 13 local lenders likely to need funding. The list ranked banks according to the "Texas ratio," which proved accurate as an indicator of banks' financial health during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, the last time large numbers of banks went under.
Most of the banks on the list are small, community-based lenders that serve local businesses and homeowners, providing the financial fuel for a segment of the economy often overlooked by bigger banks. But their relatively low capital levels give them little financial cushion to absorb rising loan defaults. And many will find the search for capital more difficult than did Platinum, which lined up its deal before credit and housing markets collapsed this year.
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