Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc. Reports Operating Results (10-Q)

Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc. (BHLB, Financial) filed Quarterly Report for the period ended 2010-06-30.

Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc. has a market cap of $269.7 million; its shares were traded at around $19.22 with and P/S ratio of 1.87. The dividend yield of Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc. stocks is 3.33%.BHLB is in the portfolios of Chuck Royce of Royce& Associates, Private Capital of Private Capital Management, Columbia Wanger of Columbia Wanger Asset Management, Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies LLC.

Highlight of Business Operations:

On July 21, 2010, the President signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (the “Act”) into law. The Act comprehensively reforms the regulation of financial institutions, products and services. Among other things, the Act provides for new capital standards that eliminate the treatment of trust preferred securities as Tier 1 capital. Existing trust preferred securities are grandfathered for banking entities with less than $15 billion of assets, such as the Company. The Act permanently raises deposit insurance levels to $250,000, retroactive to January 1, 2008, and extends for two years the Transaction Account Guarantee Program, which will become mandatory for all insured depository institutions. Pursuant to modifications under the Act, deposit insurance assessments will be calculated based on an insured depository institution s assets rather than its insured deposits and the minimum reserve ratio will be raised to 1.35%. In addition, the Act authorizes the Federal Reserve Board to regulate interchange fees for debit card transactions and establishes new minimum mortgage underwriting standards for residential mortgages. The Act also establishes the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (“CFPB”) as an independent bureau of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors ("FRBG"). The CFPB has the authority to prescribe rules governing the provision of consumer financial products and services. The Act establishes a timeline for the consolidation of the activities of the Office of Thrift Supervision (“OTS”) into other existing bank regulatory agencies. The OTS is currently the regulator of the holding company, Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc.. It is expected that regulation of the holding company will transfer to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors by the end of 2011. The Federal Reserve has different regulations, including quantitative minimum consolidated capital ratios, which have not previously applied to the holding company.

Read the The complete Report