Turn board-meeting minutes into a scoop

Stella Hopkins, business enterprise reporter of The Charlotte Observer, took North Carolina’s first bank failure since 1993 and turned it into a story questioning another cause of bank failures.


Her nutgraf:

Many people share blame for the country's financial crisis, from reckless CEOs to hands-off regulators to eager borrowers. The Cape Fear (Bank) saga highlights another group – bank directors, who are charged with safeguarding their institutions and shareholders.

Stella says the story started when she noted in an SEC filing the resignation of director Davie Waggett, who’d also defaulted on loans from the bank.

“Initially, we thought this story would focus on insider lending,” she says. “Reporting led us to the realization that the focus was the directors.”

Stella reviewed more than 450 pages of board meeting minutes, which were available because the bank had failed. The minutes, which cost about $100 to photocopy, provided greater insight into the loans.

Today’s Tip: Don’t overlook board-meeting minutes as sources of information. They can give you a behind-the-scenes look at how a company is run.

Stella says reading federal reports and summaries of past bank failures also can help you better understand what to search for. Finally, she says to develop a relationship with key regulators, state and federal. “They can be a huge help, on background, to test premises,” Stella says.