Sun Bancorp plans to sell or shut several of its branches, and lay off 200 plus workers

July 04--Money-losing Sun Bancorp Inc. of Mount Laurel, under pressure to please investors and government regulators and boost its sagging share price, plans to sell or shut a string of its Sun National Bank branches and lay off more than 200 of the company's 600-plus workers, new chief executive officer Thomas O'Brien said in a statement Thursday.

"The layoffs are part of an overall restructuring plan to bring the bank's revenue and expense model, and overall efficiency ratio, in line with our peers," said spokesman Mike Dineen.

Sun, with $3 billion in loans and other assets at 56 branches and other locations, plans to sell Shore branches south of Atlantic City to Sturdy Savings Bank for a net gain of about $11 million, and shut central New Jersey branches in Branchburg, Holland and Hillsborough and on Main Street in Freehold. It plans, instead, to focus on faster-growing parts of the state, and may close more South Jersey branches by next year.

It also plans to shut Sun Home Loans and its health-care and asset-based lending units.

Buyout specialist Wilbur L. Ross Jr. bought a nearly 25 percent, $50 million stake in the bank four years ago.

Ross has a record as an activist investor who pressures managers to cut costs, boost earnings, and sell out at a profit. But he has so far failed to pressure Sun into profitability. The bank has lost money every year since 2009, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. records.

Sun's longtime investors and directors include members of the Brown family, who parlayed early investments in Vineland real estate into a national business empire that includes the trucking firm National Freight Inc. and the transport logistics firm NFI Industries, of Voorhees.

In the 1990s, under the Browns and other prominent South Jersey directors, Sun grew out of Cumberland County and added offices along the Jersey Shore, in the Princeton area and in other markets, and sought to replace New Jersey and Philadelphia-area banks that sold to out-of-town companies as a leading regional lender.

The share price peaked at over $20 in early 2004, but it has ranged from $3$5 since 2010, when then-boss Thomas Geisel gave back federal Troubled Asset Relief Program money, rather than submit to what the bank said were too-strict federal conditions, including limits on executive compensation. Sun fired Geisel last year.

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