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Wiki Wiki Summary
Environmental, social, and corporate governance Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is an approach to evaluating the extent to which a corporation works on behalf of social goals that go beyond the role of a corporation to maximize profits on behalf of the corporation's shareholders. Typically, the social goals advocated within an ESG perspective include working to achieve a certain set of environmental goals, as well as a set of goals having to do with supporting certain social movements, and a third set of goals having to do with whether the corporation is governed in a way that is consistent with the goals of the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement.A variety of governmental organizations and financial institutions have devised ways to measure the extent to which a specific corporation is aligned with ESG goals.
Financial accounting Financial accounting is the field of accounting concerned with the summary, analysis and reporting of financial transactions related to a business. This involves the preparation of financial statements available for public use.
Propagation of uncertainty In statistics, propagation of uncertainty (or propagation of error) is the effect of variables' uncertainties (or errors, more specifically random errors) on the uncertainty of a function based on them. When the variables are the values of experimental measurements they have uncertainties due to measurement limitations (e.g., instrument precision) which propagate due to the combination of variables in the function.
International financial institutions An international financial institution (IFI) is a financial institution that has been established (or chartered) by more than one country, and hence is subject to international law. Its owners or shareholders are generally national governments, although other international institutions and other organizations occasionally figure as shareholders.
Financial crisis of 2007–2008 The financial crisis of 2008, or Global Financial Crisis, was a severe worldwide economic crisis that occurred in the early 21st century. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929).
Arithmetic Arithmetic (from Ancient Greek ἀριθμός (arithmós) 'number', and τική [τέχνη] (tikḗ [tékhnē]) 'art, craft') is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers—addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th century, Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano formalized arithmetic with his Peano axioms, which are highly important to the field of mathematical logic today.
Operations management Operations management is an area of management concerned with designing and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as few resources as needed and effective in meeting customer requirements.
Bitwise operation In computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on a bit string, a bit array or a binary numeral (considered as a bit string) at the level of its individual bits. It is a fast and simple action, basic to the higher-level arithmetic operations and directly supported by the processor.
Competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, individuals, economic and social groups, etc.
Activity diagram Activity diagrams are graphical representations of workflows of stepwise activities and actions with support for choice, iteration and concurrency. In the Unified Modeling Language, activity diagrams are intended to model both computational and organizational processes (i.e., workflows), as well as the data flows intersecting with the related activities.
Customer Profitability Analysis Customer Profitability Analysis (in short CPA) is a management accounting and a credit underwriting method, allowing businesses and lenders to determine the profitability of each customer or segments of customers, by attributing profits and costs to each customer separately. CPA can be applied at the individual customer level (more time consuming, but providing a better understanding of business situation) or at the level of customer aggregates / groups (e.g.
Privately held company A privately held company or private company is a company which does not offer or trade its company stock (shares) to the general public on the stock market exchanges, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned and traded or exchanged privately or over-the-counter. In the case of a close corporation, there are a relatively small number of shareholders or company members.
Net interest income Net interest income (NII) is the difference between revenues generated by interest-bearing assets and the cost of servicing (interest-burdened) liabilities. For banks, the assets typically include commercial and personal loans, mortgages, construction loans and investment securities.
Net interest margin Net interest margin (NIM) is a measure of the difference between the interest income generated by banks or other financial institutions and the amount of interest paid out to their lenders (for example, deposits), relative to the amount of their (interest-earning) assets. It is similar to the gross margin (or gross profit margin) of non-financial companies.
Real property In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US, realty, is land which is the property of some person and all structures (also called improvements or fixtures) integrated with or affixed to the land, including crops, buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, and roads, among other things. The term is historic, arising from the now-discontinued form of action, which distinguished between real property disputes and personal property disputes.
Real estate appraisal Real estate appraisal, property valuation or land valuation is the process of developing an opinion of value for real property (usually market value). Real estate transactions often require appraisals because they occur infrequently and every property is unique (especially their condition, a key factor in valuation), unlike corporate stocks, which are traded daily and are identical (thus a centralized Walrasian auction like a stock exchange is unrealistic).
Property tax Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land) and personal property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property, including intellectual property.
Real estate development Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to others. Real estate developers are the people and companies who coordinate all of these activities, converting ideas from paper to real property.
A Difficult Woman A Difficult Woman is an Australian television series which screened in 1998 on the ABC. The three part series starred Caroline Goodall, in the title role of a woman whose best friend is murdered and is determined to find out why. It was written by Nicholas Hammond and Steven Vidler and directed by Tony Tilse.
The Difficult Couple The Difficult Couple (Chinese: 难夫难妻; pinyin: Nànfū Nànqī), also translated as Die for Marriage, is a 1913 Chinese film. It is known for being the earliest Chinese feature film.
Syndicated loan A syndicated loan is one that is provided by a group of lenders and is structured, arranged, and administered by one or several commercial banks or investment banks known as lead arrangers.\nThe syndicated loan market is the dominant way for large corporations in the U.S. and Europe to receive loans from banks and other institutional financial capital providers.
Dirichlet conditions In mathematics, the Dirichlet conditions are sufficient conditions for a real-valued, periodic function f to be equal to the sum of its Fourier series at each point where f is continuous. Moreover, the behavior of the Fourier series at points of discontinuity is determined as well (it is the midpoint of the values of the discontinuity).
Causality conditions In the study of Lorentzian manifold spacetimes there exists a hierarchy of causality conditions which are important in proving mathematical theorems about the global structure of such manifolds. These conditions were collected during the late 1970s.The weaker the causality condition on a spacetime, the more unphysical the spacetime is.
Wolfe conditions In the unconstrained minimization problem, the Wolfe conditions are a set of inequalities for performing inexact line search, especially in quasi-Newton methods, first published by Philip Wolfe in 1969.In these methods the idea is to find\n\n \n \n \n \n min\n \n x\n \n \n f\n (\n \n x\n \n )\n \n \n {\displaystyle \min _{x}f(\mathbf {x} )}\n for some smooth \n \n \n \n f\n :\n \n \n R\n \n \n n\n \n \n →\n \n R\n \n \n \n {\displaystyle f\colon \mathbb {R} ^{n}\to \mathbb {R} }\n . Each step often involves approximately solving the subproblem\n\n \n \n \n \n min\n \n α\n \n \n f\n (\n \n \n x\n \n \n k\n \n \n +\n α\n \n \n p\n \n \n k\n \n \n )\n \n \n {\displaystyle \min _{\alpha }f(\mathbf {x} _{k}+\alpha \mathbf {p} _{k})}\n where \n \n \n \n \n \n x\n \n \n k\n \n \n \n \n {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} _{k}}\n is the current best guess, \n \n \n \n \n \n p\n \n \n k\n \n \n ∈\n \n \n R\n \n \n n\n \n \n \n \n {\displaystyle \mathbf {p} _{k}\in \mathbb {R} ^{n}}\n is a search direction, and \n \n \n \n α\n ∈\n \n R\n \n \n \n {\displaystyle \alpha \in \mathbb {R} }\n is the step length.
Conditions races Conditions races are horse races in which the weights carried by the runners are laid down by the conditions attached to the race. Weights are allocated according to the sex of the runners, with female runners carrying less weight than males; the age of the runners, with younger horses receiving weight from older runners to allow for relative maturity, referred to as weight for age; and the quality of the runners, with horses that have won certain values of races giving weight to less successful entrants.
SAP ERP SAP ERP is an enterprise resource planning software developed by the German company SAP SE. SAP ERP incorporates the key business functions of an organization. The latest version of SAP ERP (V.6.0) was made available in 2006.
Nominal interest rate In finance and economics, the nominal interest rate or nominal rate of interest is either of two distinct things: \n\nthe rate of interest before adjustment for inflation (in contrast with the real interest rate); or,\nfor interest rates "as stated" without adjustment for the full effect of compounding (also referred to as the nominal annual rate). An interest rate is called nominal if the frequency of compounding (e.g.
Water pollution An aqueous solution is a solution in which the solvent is water. It is mostly shown in chemical equations by appending (aq) to the relevant chemical formula.
Stakeholder (corporate) In a corporation, a stakeholder is a member of "groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist", as defined in the first usage of the word in a 1963 internal memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute. The theory was later developed and championed by R. Edward Freeman in the 1980s.
Regulatory compliance In general, compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Compliance has traditionally been explained by reference to the deterrence theory, according to which punishing a behavior will decrease the violations both by the wrongdoer (specific deterrence) and by others (general deterrence).
Seizure of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs The seizure of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs by the Imperial Iranian Navy took place on 30 Nov 1971, shortly after the withdrawal of British forces from the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs, all located in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The Imperial State of Iran had claimed sovereignty over both sets of islands, while the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah claimed the Greater and Lesser Tunbs and the Emirate of Sharjah claimed Abu Musa.
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, (informally referred to as the Atlanta Fed and the Bank), is the sixth district of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States and is headquartered in midtown Atlanta, Georgia.\nThe Atlanta Fed covers the U.S. states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, the eastern two-thirds of Tennessee, the southern portion of Louisiana, and southern Mississippi as part of the Federal Reserve System.
Financial regulation Financial regulation is a form of regulation or supervision, which subjects financial institutions to certain requirements, restrictions and guidelines, aiming to maintain the stability and integrity of the financial system. This may be handled by either a government or non-government organization.
Non-disclosure agreement A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA), secrecy agreement (SA), or non-disparagement agreement, is a legal contract or part of a contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to. Doctor–patient confidentiality (physician–patient privilege), attorney–client privilege, priest–penitent privilege and bank–client confidentiality agreements are examples of NDAs, which are often not enshrined in a written contract between the parties.
Gaming law Gaming law is the set of rules and regulations that apply to the gaming or gambling industry. Gaming law is not a branch of law in the traditional sense but rather is a collection of several areas of law that include criminal law, regulatory law, constitutional law, administrative law, company law, contract law, and in some jurisdictions, competition law.
Risk Factors
PACIFIC MERCANTILE BANCORP ITEM 1A RISK FACTORS This Report, including Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations set forth in Part II of this Report, contains certain forward-looking statements
Forward-looking statements contain estimates of, or our expectations, beliefs or views regarding, our future financial performance, which are based on current information and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual operating results and financial performance in the future to differ, possibly significantly, from set forth in the forward-looking statements
Accordingly, for that reason, you should not place undue reliance on those forward-looking statements
Those risks and uncertainties include, although they are not limited to, the following: We face intense competition from other banks and financial institutions that could hurt our business We conduct our business operations in Southern California, where the banking business is highly competitive and is dominated by a relatively small number of large multi-state banks with operations and offices covering wide geographical areas
We also compete with other financial service businesses, mutual fund companies, and securities brokerage and 20 ______________________________________________________________________ [54]Table of Contents investment banking firms that offer competitive banking and financial products and services
The larger banks, and some of those other financial institutions, have greater resources that enable them to conduct extensive advertising campaigns and to shift resources to regions or activities of greater potential profitability
Some of these banks and institutions also have substantially more capital and higher lending limits that enable them to attract larger clients, and offer financial products and services that we are unable to offer, particularly with respect to attracting loans and deposits
Increased competition may prevent us (i) from achieving increases, or could even result in decreases, in our loan volume or deposit balances, or (ii) from increasing interest rates on loans or reducing interest rates we pay to attract or retain deposits, any of which could cause a decline in our interest income or an increase in our interest expense, that could lead to reductions in our net interest income and earnings
Adverse changes in economic conditions in Southern California could disproportionately harm our business The large majority of our customers and the properties securing a large proportion of our loans are located in Southern California
A downturn in economic conditions or the occurrence of natural disasters in Southern California could harm our business by: • reducing loan demand which, in turn, would lead to reduced net interest margins and net interest income; • affecting the financial capability of borrowers to meet their loan obligations, which could result in increases in loan losses and require us to make additional provisions for possible loan losses, thereby reducing our earnings; and • causing reductions in real property values that, due to our reliance on real property to secure many of our loans, could make it more difficult for us to prevent losses from being incurred on non-performing loans through the sale of such real properties
Additionally, real estate values in California have been increasing rapidly in recent years
In the event that these values are not sustained or other events, such as earthquakes or fires, that may be more prevalent in Southern California than in other geographic areas, cause a decline in real estate values, our collateral coverage for our loans will be reduced and we may suffer increased loan losses
National economic conditions and changes in Federal Reserve monetary policies could affect our operating results Our ability to achieve and sustain our profitability is substantially dependent on our net interest income
Like most banking organizations and other depository institutions, our net interest income is affected by a number of factors outside of our control, including changes in market rates of interest which, in turn, are affected by changes in national economic conditions and national monetary policies adopted by the Federal Reserve Board
From 2001 and continuing until June 30, 2004, the Federal Reserve Board followed a policy of reducing interest rates in an effort to stimulate the national economy
Those interest rate reductions, coupled with sluggishness in the economy, led to decreases in our net interest margin during 2003 and made it more difficult to increase earnings
We cannot predict whether the improvement in the economy will continue, or whether the Federal Reserve Board’s increases in interest rates that began in the second half of 2004 and, to date, has totaled 325 basis points, will enable us to increase our net interest margins
On the other hand, the benefits of increased market rates of interest may be offset, partially or in whole, because those increases will increase the costs of attracting deposits and obtaining borrowings
If we are unable to effectuate commensurate increases in the rates we are able to charge on existing or new loans due to competitive pressures or contractual restrictions on our ability to increase interest rates on existing loans, our net interest margin may suffer despite the increase in interest rates
Changes in economic conditions and increasing rates of interest also could cause prospective borrowers to fail to qualify for our loan products and reduce loan demand, thereby reducing our net interest margins
In addition, if economic conditions or real property values were to decline, that could adversely affect the financial capability of borrowers to meet their loan obligations, which could result in increases in loan losses and require us to increase the provisions we make for possible loan losses
21 ______________________________________________________________________ [55]Table of Contents Expansion of existing financial centers might not achieve expected growth or increases in profitability We have grown substantially in the past six years by (i) opening new financial centers in population centers, and (ii) adding banking professionals at our existing financial centers, with the objective of attracting additional customers including, in particular, small to medium size businesses, that will add to our profitability
We intend to continue that growth strategy
However, there is no assurance that we will continue to be successful in achieving this objective
Implementation of this strategy requires us to incur expenses in establishing new financial centers or adding banking professionals, long before we are able to attract, and with no assurance that we will succeed in attracting, a sufficient number of new customers that will enable us to generate the revenues needed to increase our profitability
As a result, our earnings could decline if we are unable to successfully implement this strategy
We could incur losses on the loans we make The failure or inability of borrowers to repay their loans is an inherent risk in the banking business
We take a number of measures designed to reduce this risk, including the maintenance of stringent loan underwriting policies and the establishment of reserves for possible loan losses and the requirement that borrowers provide collateral that we could sell in the event they fail to pay their loans
However, the ability of borrowers to repay their loans, the adequacy of our reserves and our ability to sell collateral for amounts sufficient to offset loan losses are affected by a number of factors outside of our control, such as changes in economic conditions, increases in market rates of interest and changes in the condition or value of the collateral securing our loans
Government regulations may impair our operations, restrict our growth or increase our operating costs We are subject to extensive supervision and regulation by federal and state bank regulatory agencies
The primary objective of these agencies is to protect bank depositors and other customers and not shareholders, whose respective interests will often differ
The regulatory agencies have the legal authority to impose restrictions which they believe are needed to protect depositors and customers of banking institutions, even if those restrictions would adversely affect the ability of the banking institution to expand its business or pay cash dividends, or result in increases in its costs of doing business or hinder its ability to compete with financial services companies that are not regulated or banks or financial service organizations that are less regulated
Additionally, due to the complex and technical nature of many of the government regulations to which banking organizations are subject, inadvertent violations of those regulations may occur
In such an event, we would be required to correct or implement measures to prevent a recurrence of such violations
If more serious violations were to occur, the regulatory agencies could limit our activities or growth, fine us or ultimately put us out of business
In February 2006, we entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as a result of criticisms and concerns it had with respect to our mortgage loan regulatory compliance program
The Memorandum of Understanding requires us to take a number of actions that are designed to strengthen, and to satisfactorily resolve the criticisms and concerns expressed by the Federal Reserve Bank with respect to, that compliance program
Those actions include adopting new compliance procedures and policies and implementing new training programs for our lending staff that are designed (i) to assure greater oversight by management over our mortgage lending operations, (ii) to minimize failures by our lending personnel to meet the requirements of our mortgage lending regulatory compliance policies, and (iii) to enable us to identify and correct, in an expeditious manner, any compliance failures by our lending personnel
We expect that we will be able to address and resolve in a satisfactory manner the concerns of the Federal Reserve Bank and that neither the Memorandum of Understanding, nor the actions it requires us to take, will have a material effect on our results of operations or our financial condition
However, if we fail to implement the actions required by the Memorandum of Understanding or to satisfactorily resolve the concerns of the Federal Reserve Bank, it could impose restrictions on our business that could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations
Additional information regarding the Memorandum of Understanding is set forth in Part I of this Report under the caption “Supervision and Regulation
22 ______________________________________________________________________ [56]Table of Contents Our computer and network systems may be vulnerable to unforeseen problems and security risks The computer systems and network infrastructure that we use to provide automated and internet banking services could be vulnerable to unforeseen problems
Our operations are dependent upon our ability to protect our computer equipment against damage from fire, power loss, telecommunications failure, earthquakes and similar catastrophic events and from security breaches
Any of those occurrences could result in damage to or a failure of our computer systems that could cause an interruption in our banking services or and, therefore, harm our business, operating results and financial condition
Additionally, interruptions in service, and security breaches that could result in the theft of confidential customer information, could lead existing customers to terminate their banking relationships with us and could make it more difficult for us to attract new banking customers
The loss of key personnel could hurt our financial performance Our success depends to a great extent on the continued availability of our existing management and, in particular, on Raymond E Dellerba, our President and Chief Executive Officer
In addition to their skills and experience as bankers, our executive officers provide us with extensive community ties upon which our competitive strategy is partially based
As a result, the loss of the services of any of these officers could harm our ability to implement our business strategy or our future operating results
Evolving regulation of corporate governance may result in additional expenses and continuing uncertainty Changing laws, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, new SEC regulations and NASDAQ Stock Market rules are creating uncertainty for companies such as ours
We are committed to maintaining high standards of corporate governance and public disclosure
As a result, we already have invested significant resources, and expect in the future to invest additional resources, to comply with those laws, regulations and standards
This investment may result in increased general and administrative expenses and a diversion of management time and attention from revenue generating activities to compliance activities
Also, if our efforts to comply with new or changed laws, regulations and standards do not achieve the results or objectives intended by regulatory or governing bodies, our reputation may be harmed or we may be subject to litigation
Decision to Exit the Wholesale Mortgage Lending Business might not meet the expectations of Management In the second quarter of 2005 we decided to exit the wholesale mortgage lending business in order to concentrate our capital and other resources on our commercial banking business
There is no assurance that this decision will turn out to be successful, in terms of the objectives underlying that decision, including growing our commercial banking business and increasing the efficiency of our operations and our profitability
Other Risks Other risks that could affect our future financial performance are described in the Section entitled “Risk Factors” in the Prospectus dated December 8, 2003, included in our S-2 Registration Statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and readers of this Report are urged to review those risks as well
Due to these and other possible uncertainties and risks, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward looking statements contained in this Report, which speak only as of the date of this Report
We also disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements contained in this Report or in the above-referenced Prospectus