The NCUA may be telling any who ask it has no intent of compelling corporate credit unions to merge, however, the agency very recently posted a document titled “Corporate Credit Union Merger Manual” on its website.
Fourteen pages long, including a glossary and a checklist of necessary merger forms, the document is a how-to for boards of corporates who have decided to proceed down this path.
“It was very helpful to us,” said one corporate CEO now engaged in piecing together a merger.
He added that his staff “happened” upon the document on the NCUA website and that is because NCUA has not done much to promote the manual’s existence.
Asked for a statement about the why of the manual – “is NCUA anticipating a wave of corporate mergers,” David W. Small, assistant director of public affairs at NCUA, replied via email: “The Department of Treasury wanted NCUA to have a manual specific to corporate mergers. NCUA had one for natural persons credit unions and this is simply a refresh of that document. The forms are all basically the same. There are no real material changes in this manual than what we’ve asked for before plus any new rules that have been implemented.
“NCUA’s Office of Corporate Credit Unions started off with the chartering manual refresh first, which was a bigger task since NCUA hasn’t chartered a corporate CU in 30 years. The merger manual only needed a refresh of a much newer document. We know there are mergers occurring after the industry shakeup. But no, its issuance was not based on any expectation of any wave of mergers.”
