By Dana Hedgpeth
updated 7:47 a.m. ET Oct. 14, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - Guy T. Williams, a Louisiana banker, had never done business with Willie Simms, head of a local union for streetcar and bus drivers. But that didn't stop Williams from lending Simms $77,000 last month -- with no collateral, no paperwork and little more than a promise to pay it back.
"My people hadn't gotten paid in two weeks," said Simms, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1560. The banks didn't know him, he said, "but I told them I had guys who were in shelters, couldn't get to their local banks and were down to $3."
The next day, Williams, president of Gulf Coast Bank & Trust Co., sent a few employees to the Baton Rouge shelter where Simms and some of his workers were staying because their homes had been flooded by Hurricane Katrina. The bank staffers gave out small white envelopes -- each containing $700 in cash -- to 110 of Simms's workers.
The bank did "a great thing," said Simms, who has since repaid the loan. "They stepped up to the plate."
Since Katrina ripped through the gulf region, local banks have faced a twofold challenge: As they struggle to reopen their branches, they must also help customers who are also trying to rebuild or restart their businesses. In this environment, some banks are making new loans with little assurance they'll be repaid, even while wondering what will happen with prior loans for local businesses, houses and cars that suffered severe damage from the storm.
"These businesses have to keep going because they're vital in saving our community," said Williams, who also is the former head of the Louisiana Bankers Association. "We're the ones who know how to do it, and we want to do it."
Williams visited Capitol Hill last week, hoping to convince lawmakers that Louisiana banks are better equipped to dispense small-business loans than the federal government. "I don't think people in Washington truly understand the magnitude of the disaster or how much we really need," he said. "People listened, but they don't truly comprehend it. I'm not optimistic that things are going to happen."
In the days immediately after Katrina, Williams, who volunteers for the sheriff's department in St. Bernard Parish just east of New Orleans, used his pirogue -- the Cajun word for a flat-bed canoe -- to rescue stranded residents in New Orleans. But now he has returned to banking full time, reopening six of his nine branches throughout southern Louisiana.
In St. Bernard, which was virtually wiped out by tidal surges, Williams's bank is operating out of a trailer in a parking lot -- a few miles from Shorty's Po' Boy restaurant, the only other business open in the area.
Williams has made $20 million in new loans over the past month, he said, including a loan to a businessman who needed to buy three dump trucks to remove debris and another to an electrician who needed to front-end some wages for workers he was hiring from out of town.
"Normally we make about $30 million in loans a month, so doing $20 million in a month isn't bad considering what we had to deal with," Williams said. "We've had no phone lines and tough communications."
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