Johnson buys bank, plans black-focused firm

Former CEO of BET to build financial services firm for African Americans

By Terence O'Hara
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Robert L. Johnson, the founder and former chief executive of Black Entertainment Television, said yesterday that he acquired a tiny Florida savings and loan and plans to move it to Washington to use as the springboard for a large consumer financial services company aimed at black customers.

The bank, to be renamed Urban Trust, is part of an effort by Johnson to build what he hopes will be the country's largest minority-owned financial services company, one positioned to attract major Wall Street investors as it seeks to foster and profit from rising black wealth. The company is meant to compete with the nation's most elite financial firms, but, its new chief executive said, it will also spend "a lot of afternoons in churches" advocating homeownership.

"Urban Trust will . . . bring more access to capital to individuals and families who need it, especially those that need help managing their assets and their wealth in a better way," Johnson said. "There's no doubt in my mind that a well-capitalized, well-managed black-owned financial institution will be welcomed."

While average household net worth of blacks is far lower than the national average -- $15,500 vs. $71,700 in 1998, according to the latest figures compiled by the Federal Reserve -- it is growing far more rapidly than the national average.

In establishing Urban Trust, Johnson wants to reverse a decade-long slide in the number and performance of small, undercapitalized black-owned banks across the country whose traditional markets have been invaded by mainstream financial institutions.

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Comments

[Gerald Jethro]

I love the ideal that Bobby Johnson opening a bank for minorities, because we been put aside for so long, we need opportunities for our people to see a another way of life, than of crime, but INVESTMENT, and OPPORTUNITY, and EDUCATION, being the key to a happy prosperous life. But through everything God being first in our LIFE.