Mission pays off TARP
Mission Community Bancorp has repaid the $5.1 million in federal bank rescue funds it took at the height of the financial crisis.
The San Luis Obispo-based company said Jan. 4 that it had paid $5.1 million from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to the U.S. Treasury, including $30,554 in accrued and unpaid dividends.
“The capital infusion provided by the program in 2009 reinforced Mission Community Bank’s support of the communities we serve with lending that helped stimulate our local economies at a crucial time,” Mission CEO and Chairman Jim Lokey said in a statement.
The parent of Mission Community Bank said that since January 2009, when it took the TARP funds, the Treasury has earned dividends of $759,584.
The San Luis Obispo-based company is the first tri-county institution to pay back its TARP debt without continuing its financial relationship with the federal government.
Pacific Capital Bancorp, the largest bank based in the region, repaid the $180.6 million in TARP funds it took with shares of its stock, meaning that it has officially repaid the rescue funds but that the U.S. Treasury remains a shareholder in the Santa Barbara-based bank. Meanwhile, Westlake Village-based First California Financial Group paid its $25 million TARP obligation off in 2010 with proceeds from a new government loan program, the Small-Business Lending Fund.
Mission’s TARP payment doesn’t include $4 million that Santa Lucia Bancorp, which Mission acquired in October 2011, took out.
According to an October 2011 quarterly report to Congress, the following tri-county banks still owe the following amounts under TARP:
• Heritage Oaks Bancorp: $21 million
• Community West Bancshares: $15.6 million
• Santa Clara Valley Bank: $2.9 million
• Ojai Community Bank: $2.1 million
