First Place execs won’t discuss financial results

By Grace Wyler

gwyler@vindy.com

vienna

Executives of First Place Financial Corp., the parent company of First Place Bank, declined to talk about the company’s financial results at its annual meeting Thursday, leaving shareholders largely in the dark about the bank’s recent performance.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversees community banking, has asked First Place to increase its provision for loan losses in light of the agency’s recent audit of the bank’s finances, First Place’s chief executive Steven Lewis told about 50 shareholders and employees gathered at Avalon Lakes Golf and Country Club at Squaw Creek.

First Place is in talks with federal regulators about the appropriate amount of the provisions and will refrain from discussing its financial results until those talks are concluded, Lewis said.

The company postponed the release of its most recent quarterly earnings report last week.

Lewis did take a moment to address shareholder anxiety.

First Place posted a net loss of $31.2 million for the 2010 fiscal year, compared with a $110 million loss in 2009. The 2009 results include a $93.7 million accounting charge to account for the depreciation of some of its previous acquisitions. The bank charged off $87 million in bad loans in 2010, up from a $31 million loan-loss provision the year before.

First Place’s financial difficulties primarily are due to a major decline in asset quality, particularly in southeastern Michigan, which has been hit hard by the decline of the automotive industry in 2008 and 2009.

After the meeting, First Place shareholder Ann Marie Proflanclik grilled Lewis about the bank’s decision to acquire Franklin Bancorp, a commercial bank based in Southfield, Mich., at the end of 2003.

Proflanclik said she and her husband have lost $500,000 from their pensions as a result of First Place’s financial losses.

“Most people here are hometown people,” Proflanclik said. “They invested because it was a hometown bank; they didn’t know that you were going to go out into Michigan.”

“Nobody feels worse than I do,” Lewis said. “But I won’t apologize for the collapse of the auto industry, and I can’t apologize for going to Michigan — at the time, it was a good investment.”