A New York group looking to form a blank-check company to buy failed banks has applied for deposit insurance.
Organizers of Porticoes National Bank submitted an application with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on April 9. The application wasn’t immediately available.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in December granted the proposed bank conditional approval with an understanding that the group will apply for Federal Reserve membership and obtain deposit insurance.
Final approval “will not be granted unless all pre-opening requirements and conditions are met and the review factors required under the Bank Merger Act for any purchase-and-assumption transaction is consistent with approval,” the OCC said in an approval letter to Leslie Lieberman, the proposed bank’s organizer.
The proposed Porticoes National, which would operate as a unit of Porticoes Capital, would assume liabilities and buy assets of failed banks from the FDIC.
The bank’s specific size, scope and activities will be unknown until it successfully bids on a failed institution, the OCC letter said.
Manuel Sánchez Rodriguez would serve as the bank’s chairman, president and CEO. The other organizers are Thomas Constance, Howard Curd and Phillip DeLeonardis.
Lieberman is a former executive vice chairman and FCB Financial Holdings, a Florida bank that was sold to Synovus Financial in 2019. A year later, Lieberman and DeLeonardis were part of a group that sought to form NewBank, which would have been a nationally chartered bank based in New York.