Leonard Ackerman Chairman of the Board

Bridgehampton - A new bank is coming to the Hamptons pledging to offer full service of the highest order to its patrons who will also most likely be its prime investors and stockholders when the bank opens for business in the fall of 2008 with branches in East Hampton and Bridgehampton.

Dubbed the Georgica Bank, in tribute to the Georgica Pond area of East Hampton, the newly minted community bank hopes to offer small town service to high-end customers with big bank accounts.

"We will provide the highest quality service to our customers," Sandra Novick asserted as she held forth on the new enterprise where she has signed on as a Senior Vice President. Novick previously worked at the Bridgehampton National Bank before making the move to the start-up bank a few months ago. She is accompanied by other staffers who also worked at the Bridgehampton National Bank. The key staffers of the Georgica Bank all live and work on the East End and report to have strong ties to the community.

Sandra Novick Senior Vice President

Interested investors can purchase stock now being sold in the initial private offering. The offering originally scheduled to close on May 8, has been extended for another 90 days due to the positive response from investors.

"The offering has been very successful," Novick said from her office in East Hampton. While the bank has been granted a 90-day extension, the bank's organizers can close the offering at any time during that period. According to Novick, the offering will remain open for another 30 days.

"We are progressing towards our goal to raise a minimum of $25 million," Novick reported, indicating that the offering will remain open for another four weeks tops, at which time the bank's organizers expect to have raised more than $25 million minimum start-up goal number.

The stock is being offered at $10 a share with a minimum investment of $25,000. The maximum investment is 50,000 shares or $500,000.

Christopher Becker Chief Executive Officer National Bank

Interest is running high among investors according to Novick who noted the Georgica Bank is also running advertisements seeking investors in newspapers on the North Fork where many residents participated in and reaped the profits of another bank that started out as a small town bank over 25 years ago and morphed into a giant banking corporation within a quarter-of-a-century.

That small town bank is the North Fork Bank, now familiar to its patrons as Capital One. The transformation for those who witnessed it is still an astonishing business story. While the success of the North Fork Bank stands out for the breath and scope of the enterprise that experienced phenomenal growth, other local banks have also made their mark on the region, most notably the Bridgehampton National Bank and the Suffolk County National Bank, which started out as Bank of The Hamptons.

"We started advertising on the North Fork because we were getting calls from interested investors over there," Novick explained. The community is excited to see a small town bank taking hold," Novick said as she described the bank's formation.

Janet T. Verneuille, Chief Financial Officer

The brainchild of East Hampton attorney Leonard Ackerman who is the newly anointed Chairman of the Board, Georgica Bank was conceived for persons not unlike Ackerman himself who are looking for a different type of banking geared to the kind of one-on-one personal service that he and his initial group of organizers felt was lacking in other banks in the area where customer files and accounts are not centralized.

"We will be able to handle everything for our customers in one phone call because we will have complete information in their files. We will not have to deal with one department not knowing what the other is doing," Novick explained, illustrating the "high touch" approach. For the layman, that is a polite way of saying that checking will talk to savings, and the credit card department will talk to the banking branch. "It makes it so much easier. You will know who you are dealing with, and they will know you. You won't get lost in a shuffle. All your records will be centralized," Novick said.

As Novick explained the process, she noted most banks tend to silo customer records compartmentalizing them in separate piles or silos, rather than centralizing them. Customers of the Georgica Bank will not have to fill out five forms and wait on line for service.

Michael J. Spolarich, Chief Lending Officer

"We have a lot of ways we plan to be different," Novick added. "We are going to be customer oriented so going to the bank isn't something you dread once a week because you have to wait on a long line."

Extensive Process To Opening
"We have preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)," Novick said, "and that is a big deal. Not everyone can apply for a national charter," Novick continued as she described the 100-page application forms involved.

Once the application has been filed, representatives of the OCC interview the bank's organizers in exhaustive three-on-one interviews, and also conduct extensive background checks involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The intense background checks are designed to protect the public.

"That's all done," Novick said, "now we are waiting for the OCC to put their final stamp of approval on the bank."

The Georgica Bank has big plans for their office design that will adhere to a form follows function formula in the always architecturally correct Hamptons where good design is next to godliness. "We plan to improve the functionality of space in our banks," Novick said. One bank will be located on Main Street in Bridgehampton while the East Hampton branch will be located at 34 Pantigo Road in a portion of a building owned by Ackerman that has also housed his law offices for many years.

The Georgica Bank plans to open its doors for business in the fall of 2008 but has not pinpointed a specific date yet. "We are very excited, and so is the community," Novick said. "People are looking forward to this. It's what the Hamptons is all about, doing business with local people who know you and who you know."