Park National Bank agrees to pay $500K fine

Park National Bank has agreed to pay a $500,000 civil penalty to resolve a Securities and Exchange investigation into the bank’s accounting for its allowance for loan losses tied to bad loans at a former subsidiary in Florida, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

The Newark-based bank, which has a location in Springboro and several in Springfield and Urbana under the Security National Bank affiliate, said in a regulatory filing the penalty closes the SEC investigation of bad loans at Vision Bank in 2010 and 2011, the largest of which were tied to real estate and development projects.

In February 2012, the bank voluntarily restated some of its financial statements, based on corrections Park made to account for allowances for loan losses. The restatements reflected $22.2 million more in impairment charges than the bank originally reported and a decrease in net income before taxes of $24.8 million.

The bank said there was no finding of any wrongdoing by anyone at the bank, adding that when a company restates financial statements and amends annual or quarterly reports, the SEC often conducts an investigation.

Park bought Vision, with offices from the Florida panhandle into Alabama, in 2006 for $171 million as part of a move to grow beyond its Midwest roots into a more-rapidly growing part of the United States at the time.

But the bust in the housing market followed by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico hurt those operations, and Park sold them in 2012.