New York Community Bank is adopting Flagstar Financial as its new brand name to unify its operations under a single banner, the company announced Tuesday.
The change will become effective Oct. 25, the company said. Incidentally, that’s also the day the bank is set to report third-quarter results.
The company will also change its ticker symbol to FLG as of the open of business Oct. 28.
“Over the past six months, the Board of Directors and management have made remarkable progress in laying a strong foundation for the future,” CEO Joseph Otting said in a statement Tuesday. “We've diversified our business model, established relationship-driven businesses and continue to recruit top-tier talent with expertise in advancing our vision.”
NYCB’s financial health came under scrutiny when the parent company of Flagstar Bank disclosed in January a $252 million loss over commercial real estate exposure and cut its quarterly dividend by 70%. The announcement sent NYCB’s share price into a tailspin that continued as the bank took larger losses and named a new CEO.
The bank received a $1.05 billion capital infusion in March from investors led by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who installed Otting, a former Office of the Comptroller of the Currency chief, as CEO.
Lawmakers nonetheless questioned why the OCC approved NYCB’s acquisition of Flagstar in October 2022. That deal converted Flagstar to a national banking association and merged NYCB's subsidiary into it.
If any of that made the corporate structure or branding confusing from the outside, Tuesday’s move may make strides to allay that.
“Our new Company name complements the re-branding of the Bank and our branches we implemented earlier this year,” Otting said, adding the name change is a significant milestone and a “continuation of those efforts and unifies the company and our vision into a single brand.”
Less than six months after regulators approved the Flagstar deal, NYCB purchased select assets from the collapsed Signature Bank, propelling the Hicksville, New York-based lender past the $100 billion-asset threshold for stricter regulatory oversight.
Otting and NYCB’s CFO Craig Gifford laid out a strategy in May to diversify the struggling bank and return it to profitability. Within two weeks, the bank announced a sale of $5 billion in mortgage warehouse loans to JPMorgan Chase.
In July, the bank said it was selling its residential mortgage servicing business to nonbank mortgage firm Mr. Cooper for $1.4 billion.
