Mr. Bracken: Our company is a commercial bank with, at the present time, 70 branches. We cover Central and Southern New Jersey, the Greater Wilmington, Delaware/New Castle County area, and we have a branch in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We have an asset size of approximately 2.3 billion. We are a full service commercial bank with a very heavy emphasis on middle market and small business lending. However, we do have a very viable retail function as evidenced by our extensive branch network. We have a branch in all of the 13 central and southern-most counties of New Jersey, and we are in the process of finalizing an acquisition of eight additional branches, which will happen in December. They are located in the counties of Atlantic, Camden and Gloucester, New Jersey, which will then take our branch total to 78. However, at the same time, we are in the process of a branch divestiture program and we have seven other branches currently in the process of being either sold or consolidated. It's a conscious effort to refine our geographic coverage within our footprint by strategically relocating branches to areas we need to be in and exiting areas where we feel we have limited opportunities.
TWST: When we last interviewed you had embarked on a management change
and a change in strategies, plus diversification of revenues as well as
geographic diversification. Is this part of that restructuring that you
started, and how far along are you as far as your restructuring is
concerned?
Mr. Bracken: With regard to branches?
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