PA Banks Hold Footing Through Recession

The magazine U.S. Banker ranked 24 Pennsylvania banks in its annual list of the top 200 community banks nationwide, state Department of Banking spokesman Dan Egan says. The Commonwealth had more ranked banks than any other state. Egan says both Pennsylvania banks’ conservative style and the state’s relatively low real estate flux helped these banks make the list. “That combination of factors, while they didn’t necessarily generate big profits in the years past, are now paying off for these banks because they don’t find themselves in the same situation as some of the competitors who may have dabbled in sub-prime loans or looked to risky investments to bolster their balance sheets,” says Egan. Egan says he can’t say for how long such success will be sustained, but the achievement of these community banks bodes well for municipalities statewide in the short-term. The magazine’s ranking was based on the three-year average of return on equity (ROE), which measures how well a company uses investors’ money.