New York City Taxi Medallions Valued at $160,000

Signature Bank of New York announced on April 18 that it has valued each of its New York City taxi medallion loan or asset at approximately $160,000 at the end of the first quarter.

In addition, the bank during its April 18 conference call regarding its first quarter performance stated that each medallion loan in its Chicago portfolio was wrote down to $27,000.

The bank commented that it viewed these valuations to be conservative given the declining cash flows arising from taxi medallions.

Below is comments from Joseph DPaolo, President and CEO of Signature Bank of New York, from the conference call.

"Let's hit the taxi medallion portfolio head on. During the quarter - during the first quarter, market sales and cash flows continued to exhibit significant weakness. As such, we further wrote down the value of our New York medallion loans to 160,000 each and our Chicago portfolio to 27,000."

This would suggest larger potential losses arising from taxi medallion loans on the balance sheets of credit unions, since some credit unions are valuing taxi medallions at significantly higher values.

Furthermore, this could cause pending losses to the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund to increase.