On August 21, 2009
Appalachian Winter: Death of a Community Bank
In May 2006, Appalachian Bancshares was ranked as one of the best performing public companies in Georgia, while trade magazine US Banker named it one of the top 200 community banks in the nation. Today, the company is heading for the hills. The $1.2 billion-asset banking company said in a regulatory filing this week that “there is substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern,” citing rising losses and a shortage of capital. Appalachian’s gradual disintegration is far more typical of the banking crisis than the kind of sudden cardiac arrest associated with, say, Lehman Brothers or Washington Mutual. And its real estate-fueled rise and fall both reflects the previous era and prefigures what’s to come. Formed…
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