State shuts down First Guaranty, Jacksonville's oldest bank

[thelakelander]

By Roger Bull 
First Guaranty Bank and Trust, Jacksonville’s oldest bank, was closed late Friday afternoon by state officials.
All of its assets and deposits have been taken over by CenterState Bank of Florida, which is based in Winter Haven. When First Guaranty’s eight branches reopen on Monday, they will be branches of CenterState.

Full article: http://jacksonville.com/business/2012-01-27/story/state-shuts-down-first-guaranty-jacksonvilles-oldest-bank

[JeffreyS]

We moved our business account from there about a year ago to take advantage of an offer from another bank but I did like First Guaranty.

On another front on Kings street their lot was full tonight with people enjoying the area. I myself ate at Carmines.

[ronchamblin]

Hickory and Jay are fine people.  Its unfortunate that their bank, which has served the area for many decades, has been forced to end under its old name as a consequence of the crashed real estate scenario.  My real estate loan via the bank in 2007 or so was a somewhat risky one perhaps.  I've been able to make all the payments without difficulty so far, and expect to continue doing so as business is strong and up for us over last year.  I'm disappointed however.  Their efforts to assist and work with businesses was quite exceptional from my perspective.  I'm a little sad, as is always the case when something good which has been around for so long, has changed or disappeared.     

[I-10east]

With many companies going under in today's economic climate, unfortunately there aren't any guarantees. I apologize for my dumb post, it wasn't funny. 

[Dog Walker]

Jay made loans that Hickory would never had made.  I banked with them for over thirty years and only left when they were down rated to zero stars and were put under a consent agreement.  It felt like I was leaving family.

A lot of their long term employees have left them over the past three years too.

My father was one of Julian's first depositors in 1947.  He moved his accounts to the Atlantic Bank when Julian, very wisely, refused to lend him money for a business venture. 

It's always sad when a long time local company goes under.

[thekillingwax]

They have (had?) an ATM inside SVMC, it always had a fee, it eventually rose to $2, which is acceptable to me- it got a lot of use and I'm sure 90% of the people using it weren't FG customers- you could even get $5 increments out of it. Then in the span of a month or so, it went from $2.50 to $4. At the time, that was the highest charge for an ATM I had ever seen locally outside of maybe strip clubs or something. In my eyes, it was just such an asshole move. Certainly people that didn't have to use the ATM would head elsewhere, publix is up the street, they don't charge anything but the people this really targeted were the folks who were desperate- either to get food from the machines after hours or just to get cash for a ride home.

There were a bunch of employee complaints to administration and I'm sure even more from patients and family. I think it even got media attention at some point and I think SVMC finally got the picture that even though they didn't administer the ATM, people associated it with them and viewed it as them allowing this gouging to occur. After another month or so, it was dropped back down. I never used it again though and vowed to never do business with FG, so I'm not the least bit sad to see this happening to them. Good riddance.