Tag Archives: bb&t

Twitter Fight!

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So, the Winston-Salem ballpark has reemerged as a hot button issue because of this:

The Citizens Baseball Stadium Review Committee got its first look last night at financial information about the progress of BB&T Ballpark during a discussion that was not open to the public.

The committee voted unanimously to close the meeting because, it said, the financial information that the members would discuss — likely the stadium’s revenues, expenses and profit through June 30 — is confidential and protected by North Carolina law.

The Winston-Salem Journal objected to the closing of the meeting. Earlier yesterday, the city rejected a request by the Journal for the financial information supplied by the team to the city.

In a letter to the Journal, City Attorney Angela Carmon wrote that “disclosure of such confidential, competitively sensitive business information could cause substantial competitive harm or otherwise adversely impact the business interests of the Ballpark Entities.”

The Committee's decision to meet behind closed doors led to a scathing column from the Journal's Scott Sexton and then a little tete-a-tete broke out on Twitter between Mayor Joines and Sexton:

JoinesTweets

Sextontweet
A little later this appeared on the Journal website:

Mayor Allen Joines said today he will talk with the Winston-Salem Dash to see if the baseball team can release some financial information that might not otherwise be publicly available…

Joines said that the private information in the financial data includes vendor contracts, and that the team is in the process of negotiating those.

“The bottom line is, we need to determine what are the critical things the public would like to know,” Joinessaid. “I don’t think they want to see a vendor contract. I think they want to know what the attendance was and what the general total revenues are. Hopefully we can get something that is a compromise that we can share.”

 

A Little Tarnish for BB&T

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Winston-Salem based BB&T has enjoyed a very strong, positive public image especially during the last few years as other "local" banks like Wachovia painted themselves as evil-banker-villain people.  Well, it looks like the sterling image is in danger of being tarnished.  To wit, two stories in the last week (h/t to Ed Cone for lead to first story):

Visions of Profits Gone, Lot Buyers Sue (News & Observer)

Attorney Wes Hodges, whose firm filed the suits against Saunders, said that buyers were subjected to high-pressure sales tactics. He said they were told it was certain that they would reap big profits by the time the two-year loans came due and that the subdivisions would be finished by then.

He said prices of the lots were artificially increased via fraudulent appraisals and that the lender – BB&T in most cases – signed off on the loans knowing the prices had beenhyped. The frontline bankers approving the loans were paid bonuses of up to 100 percent of their annual salary for hitting targets for the number of loans written, he said.

BB&T is a defendant.A spokeswoman for the bank said it doesn't comment on ongoing litigation but that it will vigorously contest the allegations.

Whistle-Blower Ordered Re-Hired in a Ponzi Scheme (Associated Press)

The BB&T Corporation must rehire a former company investigator who said she was fired after exposing a $100 million North Carolina development scam, an administrative law judge said in a ruling released Friday. The decision, made by Judge Jeffrey Tureck, said the investigator, Amy Stroupe, should be reinstated to her position with back pay because of protection afforded by whistle-blower laws…

Investigators say the development, known as the Village of Penland, was a Ponzi scheme, and Judge Tureck said in his ruling that the bank was assisting the fraud by making loans to investors in the community.