SEC Issues Administrative Ruling on Wilmington Trust Corporation
| Targeted News Service |
In the Matter of
Respondent.
ORDER INSTITUTING CEASE-AND-DESIST PROCEEDINGS PURSUANT TO SECTION 8A OF THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933 AND SECTION 21C OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934, MAKING FINDINGS, AND IMPOSING REMEDIAL SANCTIONS AND A CEASE-AND-DESIST ORDER
I.
II.
In anticipation of the institution of these proceedings, Respondent has submitted an Offer of Settlement (the "Offer") which the Commission has determined to accept. Solely for the purpose of these proceedings and any other proceedings brought by or on behalf of the Commission, or to which the Commission is a party, and without admitting or denying the findings herein, except as to the Commission's jurisdiction over it and the subject matter of these proceedings, which are admitted, Respondent consents to the entry of this Order Instituting Cease- and-Desist Proceedings Pursuant to Section 8A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21C of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Making Findings, and Imposing Remedial Sanctions and a Cease-and-Desist Order ("Order"), as set forth below.
III.
On the basis of this Order and Respondent's Offer, the Commission finds1 that
SUMMARY
These proceedings arise out of false and misleading disclosures by
The Bank had deficient underwriting and loan monitoring controls and failed, for these and other reasons, to take appropriate action on many of its matured loans for protracted periods of time. As a result, the Bank had a large volume of loans that were past due, for reasons of maturity, 90 days or more. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("GAAP") requires that banks disclose loans that are past due 90 days or more and still accruing,2 and Regulation S-K (through SEC Industry Guide 3) further indicates that banks should disclose their "accruing loans which are contractually past due 90 days or more as to principal or interest payments."3 However, rather than disclose as past due loans that were matured (but purportedly "current for interest"), the Bank negligently and routinely omitted such loans from its disclosures of past due loans, based on unwritten, informal criteria that were loosely applied and liberally adjusted.
As a result, the Bank omitted almost
At the end of 2009, amidst increasing regulatory scrutiny, the Bank decided to address its misreporting of past due loans beginning in 2010; however, the Bank negligently implemented various practices that had the effect of avoiding full disclosure of the problems with matured loans in its portfolio. These practices included an "extension push" to extend the maturity dates of matured and maturing loans. This resulted in multiple short-term extensions for a high volume of loans even when the Bank did not have updated financial and collateral information for the loans, had not performed appropriate analysis for re-underwriting, or was engaged in difficult negotiations with borrowers concerning their matured loans.
Despite modifications to its past due reporting practices in the first and second quarters of 2010, the Bank negligently continued to omit significant volumes of matured past due loans from its disclosures, repeated its false disclosures from prior periods, and made misleading supplemental disclosures concerning the Bank's past due reporting and matured loan extension practices.
Finally, in its Form 10-Q for the third quarter of 2009 and its Form10-K for 2009, the Bank also negligently failed, as required by GAAP, to properly disclose significant increases in the Bank's nonaccruing loans according to its policy, and to properly account for updated collateral values and significant declines in commercial loan risk ratings in its loan loss provisions and reserves.
RESPONDENT
1.
OTHER RELEVANT ENTITY
2. M&T is a bank holding company headquartered in
FACTS
Past Due Loan Disclosure Guidelines
3. Under GAAP, banks are required to disclose their past due loans. Accounting Standards Codification ("ASC") Topic 310-10-50 stipulates certain disclosure requirements for loans. Specifically, ASC 310-10-50-7(b) requires disclosure of a bank's recorded investment in loans "past due 90 days or more and still accruing."4
4. Regulation S-K of the Securities Act, Item 303(a), requires the Management Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") sections of an issuer's annual filings to disclose any "information that the registrant believes to be necessary to an understanding of its financial condition [or] changes in its financial condition." Item 303(b) requires quarterly filings to discuss material changes in information described in Item 303(a).5 Instruction 13 to Item 303(a) directs bank holding companies to the information called for by SEC Industry Guide 3 ("Guide 3"), which is a policy of the
Background to the Bank's Past Due Loans Disclosure Violations
5. From at least 2006 through the third quarter of 2009, the Bank routinely removed, or, using the Bank's terminology, "waived" loans from certain internal reports and from its public disclosures of accruing loans past due 90 days or more if the loan was matured, current for interest and either 1) a loan managed by the Bank's Loan Recovery (i.e., workout) unit; or 2) a loan that the Bank claimed its loan officers were "working on" extending. The matured workout loans were waived automatically, with no further requirements; for a non-workout loan, the loan officer was asked summarily to confirm that he or she was "working on" an extension and the loan was then waived. No documents or actual progress toward an extension were required and, in practice, loan officers could simply note that the loan was matured, current for interest and should be waived.
The Bank did not have written policies or procedures governing its past due reporting process or its waiver practices.
6. On the Bank's internal "Delinquency Report," showing past due loans, the Bank's credit department indicated past due loans that would be waived. The Bank's finance department then removed the indicated loans from a second internal report, the "Past Due and Nonperforming Loans Report." This report was then incorporated in the Bank's "accruing loans past due 90 days or more" table disclosure in its
7. Equities and credit ratings analysts viewed loans 90 days or more past due as nonperforming, even if the Bank maintained them as unimpaired loans. High levels of past due loans were interpreted by the market as a signal of probable increased credit deterioration.
8. As early as
9. As the real estate market continued to decline, more loans began to mature without repayment or completion of the underlying projects. Updated appraisals and financial statements required for re-underwritten extensions were also revealing significant deterioration. Borrowers balked at providing updated information and at the more onerous terms required by re-underwritten extensions. Some loan officers, particularly those managing the Bank's
10. The Bank purported to comply with GAAP and the disclosures required by Regulation S-K and called for by Industry Guide 3, but failed to do so accurately and completely. In all relevant filings, the Bank included in its MD&A section concerning credit risk a table disclosing its purported volume of accruing loans past due 90 days or more and supplemental disclosures describing them. It also disclosed the purported volume of accruing past due loans in the notes to the financial statements in its Form 10-Ks. In each period the Bank also claimed in its filings that it mitigated credit risk by employing "rigorous loan underwriting standards," disciplined monitoring of its loan portfolio, and regular "review [of] all past due loans."
Understated Past Due Loans Disclosures in the Third Quarter of 2009
11. On or about
12. During the third quarter of 2009 and prior to the filing of the Bank's Form 10-Q, certain senior managers voiced their concerns to senior officers about the growing number of matured loans that the Bank was claiming were "in the process of extension" but had not, in reality, been extended for protracted periods of time.
13. Concerns around matured and waived loans became heightened in late
14. Nevertheless, the Bank filed its Form 10-Q on
Understated Past Due Loans Disclosures and Extension Push in the Fourth Quarter and Year End 2009
15. In the fourth quarter, the Bank decided to continue to waive matured loans if an extension was "internally approved." The new criteria purported not to allow a non-workout loan to be waived where an extension was just being "worked on," as had sufficed in earlier quarters. Accordingly, a matured past due loan would be waived from the noted internal reports and omitted from public filings if the Bank had approved a lending officer's proposal to extend the loan, regardless of whether the loan had actually been extended by the borrower. The Bank continued the automatic waiver of matured, current for interest workout loans.
16. The Bank initiated an abbreviated extension process to facilitate the "internal approval" of short-term extensions of matured loans by year end. In combination with the amended waiver practice, this allowed loans for which the Bank lacked updated appraisals or financial documentation or was still negotiating terms with the borrower either to be extended temporarily or "internally approved" and waived so that they would not be reported as past due. The Bank was aware that executing long-term extensions would be difficult particularly for its Delaware CRE loans, because poor market conditions meant the Bank needed borrowers to pay down principal or increased interest rates as a part of long-term loan modifications. Certain of the Bank's senior officers and managers were informed that these borrowers were in distressed situations that could not be quickly remedied, and they recognized that the failure to accomplish long-term modifications could result in the Bank and its "shareholders get[ting] the crap knocked out of us by analysts and regulators."
17. In early
18. Nevertheless, the Bank released its earnings and Form 8-K on
19. In
Understated Past Due Loans Disclosures and Extension Push in the First Quarter of 2010
20. In the first quarter of 2010, the Bank continued to phase out the waiver practice by determining that an "internal approval" of a loan extension would no longer suffice to waive matured loans from certain of the Bank's internal reports and its public past due reporting; rather, in order to be waived, a valid extension document had to be signed by the Borrower and received by the Bank. However, the Bank decided that matured workout loans would still be waived automatically and, as a result, excluded from the Bank's public disclosures of accruing loans past due 90 days or more.
21. The Bank had uncovered significant issues in ongoing reviews of matured and maturing loans that were resulting in the Bank's continued inability to fully analyze and appropriately re-underwrite those loans. Bank staff recommended that such loans be eligible for yet additional short-term extensions on an expedited basis without full underwriting analysis.
22. As described above, a large number of Delaware CRE loans had been waived from past due reporting at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009 on the basis that the Bank had "internally approved" extension proposals; however, many of these loans were not actually extended - i.e., there was no extension agreement executed between the Bank and the borrower - for most of the first quarter. In the last two days of the first quarter of 2010, the Bank "internally approved" new extension proposals for at least 117 of these loans, because the Bank needed yet more time to do appropriate analysis and gather documentation to re-underwrite the loans. The majority of these extension proposals contemplated short-term extensions of loans that had been waived from past due reporting in multiple prior quarters; some of the loans had been matured for over a year.
23. Notwithstanding the Bank's expedited extension practices, at quarter end, a significant volume of matured loans remained. Despite its purported use of stricter waiver criteria, the Bank subsequently waived at least
24. The Bank's public filings for the first quarter also presented the materially understated accruing past due loan amounts previously reported for the fourth quarter of 2009 (and other periods) for comparison, and did not disclose that the current period's past due loans were based on materially different criteria than in prior periods. The earnings press release and Form 10-Q noted an increase in past due loans and stated that the increase was due to matured loans for which "underwriting extensions" were in progress. However, there was no disclosure to inform investors of the Bank's significant, ongoing problems with its matured and short-term extended loans. This information would have been important to investors to know, because without it they could not understand the true condition of the Bank's loan portfolio.
Understated Past Due Loans Disclosures in the Second Quarter of 2010
25. The Bank continued to adjust its criteria for waiving loans and, after the second quarter of 2010, decided that matured, interest current workout loans should no longer be waived. In effect, by this point, the Bank had changed its practices such that all matured loans that were actually past due at the end of the quarter were to be reported as past due.
26. Before the Bank filed its current and quarterly reports for the second quarter of 2010, the Bank was aware that the market was interested in banks' loan extension and restructuring practices, including the practice of extending loans multiple times. The Bank was aware that a large volume of both its matured loans that were reported as past due as well as loans that were current had not been fully analyzed or appropriately re-underwritten, but had been waived or extended multiple times.
27. Nevertheless, the Bank's disclosures of accruing loans past due 90 days or more in its press release reporting its earnings and its Form 8-K (filed on
28. Although the Bank was aware of the effect of its changed waiver practices (i.e., the phasing out of matured loan waivers) on the past due loan disclosures over time, the Bank did not disclose the changes in its practices and made no effort to analyze the impact the changed practices would have had in prior periods. In addition, during the second quarter conference call, the Bank's statements concerning its past due reporting were misleading and the Bank also omitted information necessary to make the statements not misleading. The Bank's statements and omissions, considered together, were materially misleading because they obscured the true condition of the Bank's credit portfolio.
Understated Nonaccruing Loans Disclosures in Form 10-Q for the Third Quarter of 2009
29. According to the Bank's nonaccrual policy, loans that were rated "substandard- accruing" and also had interest payments being paid by an interest reserve or a second loan to the same borrower were to be classified as nonaccruing (and therefore impaired according to the Bank's application of ASC 310). In early
30. The manager informed other senior Bank officers that these loans required nonaccrual (and thus, impaired) classification in late
31. The GAAP standard governing subsequent events, ASC 855-10-25-1, states that "An entity shall recognize in the financial statements the effects of all subsequent events that provide additional evidence about conditions that existed at the date of the balance sheet, including the estimates inherent in the process of preparing financial statements." The conditions underlying the nonaccrual designations - the loans' substandard ratings, and the fact that their interest was being paid via interest reserve - existed as of the date of the third quarter of 2009 balance sheet. Therefore, in accordance with GAAP, the nonaccruals should have been recognized in the third quarter financial statements.
32. On
Understated Loan Loss Provision and Reserves in Form 10-Q for the Third Quarter of 2009
33. The Bank's Form 10-Q filed on
34. However,
35. Taken together, the updated appraisals for impaired loans received prior to the filing of the third quarter 2009 Form 10-Q required a supplemental provision to the reserve of
Understated Loan Loss Provision and Reserves in the Fourth Quarter 2009 Earnings Release and 10-K for 2009
36. In
37. The Bank represented to its Board of Directors that the loan reviews that resulted in the downgrades were rigorous and complete with respect to the relevant loans. However, a senior Bank officer directed that the downgrades not be formalized, and therefore neither the downgrades nor the increased reserves described in Paragraph 36 above were incorporated into the Bank's quarterly earnings release and Form 8-K or its Form 10-K, which were filed on
38. The total provision supplement associated with the downgrades was
VIOLATIONS
As a result of the conduct described above,
a. Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act, which prohibits, directly or indirectly, in the offer or sale of securities, obtaining money or property by means of any untrue statement of a material fact or any omission to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading;
b. Section 17(a)(3) of the Securities Act, which prohibits any person from engaging in any transaction, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon the purchaser in the offer or sale of securities;
c. Exchange Act Section 13(a) and Rules 13a-1, 13a-11, 13a-13 and 12b-20 thereunder, which require that every issuer of a security registered pursuant to Exchange Act Section 12 file with the Commission information, documents and annual and quarterly reports as the Commission may require and mandate that periodic reports contain such further information as may be necessary to make the required statements not misleading;
d. Exchange Act Section 13(b)(2)(A), which requires reporting companies to make and keep books, records and accounts which, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect their transactions and dispositions of their assets; and
e. Exchange Act Section 13(b)(2)(B), which requires all reporting companies to devise and maintain a system of internal accounting controls sufficient to provide reasonable assurances that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with GAAP.
IV.
In view of the foregoing, the Commission deems it appropriate to impose the sanctions agreed to in
A. Pursuant to Section 8A of the Securities Act and Section 21C of the Exchange Act,
B. Respondent shall, within 10 days of the entry of this Order, pay disgorgement of
(1) Respondent may transmit payment electronically to the Commission, which will provide detailed ACH transfer/Fedwire instructions upon request;
(2) Respondent may make direct payment from a bank account via Pay.gov through the
(3) Respondent may pay by certified check, bank cashier's check, or
Accounts Receivable Branch
HQ Bldg.,Payments by check or money order must be accompanied by a cover letter identifying
By the Commission.
Assistant Secretary
This document has footnotes and they may be found at the following URL: (http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2014/33-9646.pdf)
TNS 24KuanRap-140912 30FurigayJof-4857763 30FurigayJof
| Copyright: | (c) 2014 Targeted News Service |
| Wordcount: | 5288 |



The Top 25 Special Interest Groups During the Past 15 Years Spent a Combined $311 Million on Campaign Contributions, Lobbying and Independent Spending
Foster Named New Assistant Mecklenburg County Manager for Financial Services
Advisor News
- The modern advisor: Merging income, insurance, and investments
- Financial shocks, caregiving gaps and inflation pressures persist
- Americans unprepared for increased longevity
- More investors will seek comprehensive financial planning
- Midlife planning for women: why it matters and how advisors should adapt
More Advisor NewsAnnuity News
- LIMRA: Annuity sales notch 10th consecutive $100B+ quarter
- AIG to sell remaining shares in Corebridge Financial
- Corebridge Financial, Equitable Holdings post Q1 earnings as merger looms
- AM Best Assigns Credit Ratings to Calix Re Limited
- Transamerica introduces new RILA with optional income features
More Annuity NewsHealth/Employee Benefits News
- SENATE APPROVES BILL TO LIMIT PREMIUM INCREASES, PROTECT ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE
- All about AHCCCS: Navigating Arizona Medicaid’s changing landscape
- GOVERNOR SIGNS BIOMARKER TESTING COVERAGE BILL
- REGULATION OF AI IN PRIOR AUTHORIZATION AND CLAIMS REVIEW: A LOOK AT FEDERAL AND STATE CONSUMER PROTECTIONS
- LEADING HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS URGE NC LAWMAKERS TO RECONSIDER PROPOSAL IMPLEMENTING MEDICAID CUTS
More Health/Employee Benefits NewsLife Insurance News
- 2025 Insurance Abstracts
- AM Best Assigns Credit Ratings to Tokio Marine Newa Insurance Co., Ltd.
- Earnings roundup: Prudential works to save ‘unique’ Japanese market
- How life insurance became a living-benefits strategy
- Financial Focus : Keep your beneficiary choices up to date
More Life Insurance News