Moody’s downgrades bank’s credit rating to junk

New York Community Bank on Wednesday promoted its chairman to help stabilize the company’s operations, hours after Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the bank’s credit ratings two notches to junk.

Shares dropped as much as 13% Wednesday morning but recovered to being down about 2% in the afternoon. The stock fell more than 20% Tuesday.

NYCB made Alessandro DiNello executive chairman effective immediately, promoting him from nonexecutive chairman, to work with CEO Thomas Cangemi “to improve all aspects of the Bank’s operations,” according to a statement.

The regional bank has been in free fall, shedding almost 60% of its market value across a punishing series of trading sessions, since reporting a surprise fourth-quarter loss last week, along with mounting losses on commercial real estate and the need to slash its dividend by 71% to shore up capital levels.

The moves reignited concerns that some small and medium-sized banks could be squeezed by declines in profitability and losses on real estate holdings.

NYCB’s announcement addresses concerns over management that emerged after last week’s earnings report. The Hicksville, New York-based lender vaulted over $100 billion in assets after a pair of acquisitions — Flagstar Bank in late 2022 and the assets of Signature Bank in March 2023 — but then appeared to be caught off guard by heightened regulatory scrutiny after crossing that threshold.

DiNello, who was CEO of Flagstar Bank since 2013, joined NYCB after the acquisition closed.

Moody’s cited “multi-faceted financial, risk-management and governance challenges” at NYCB in its note late Tuesday downgrading the bank.

It downgraded all the bank’s long-term ratings to Ba2 from Baa3, which is junk status, partly on concerns about turnover of the firm’s risk management leaders, and warned the assessments remain on review for further downgrade.

“The downgrade reflects Moody’s views that NYCB faces high governance risks from its transition with regards to the leadership of its second and third lines of defense, the risk and audit functions of the bank, at a pivotal time,” Moody’s wrote. “In Moody’s view, control functions with strong knowledge of a bank’s risks are key to a bank’s credit strength.”

The bank is searching for a chief risk officer and chief audit executive and has managers serving on an interim basis in those positions, NYCB said in an overnight statement. Former executives in those roles left the bank in the months before its disastrous earnings report last week, Bloomberg reported.

NYCB also said the downgrade isn’t expected to have a “material impact on our contractual arrangements.”

During last year’s regional banking crisis, institutions including Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic were drained of deposits after customers pulled cash from the banks.

In a call Wednesday morning with investors, DiNello acknowledged the gravity of the situation NYCB suddenly finds itself in.

“We got a couple of tough, tough punches to the gut, but we’re strong and as I said, look at the deposits of this organization,” DiNello said. “I mean, does anybody think that they could be higher today than at the end of the year, given what we’ve been going through here? I mean, come on.”

NYCB has seen “virtually no deposit outflow” from retail branches, he said.

— CNBC’s Ritika Shah contributed to this report.

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