Castle Creek Wants to Increase Guaranty Stake

Castle Creek Capital has applied to the Federal Reserve for approval to increase its stake in Guaranty Bancorp from 5% to 19.9%. John Eggemeyer, Castle Creeks founder and managing partner, is currently Guaranty's chairman of the board and owns 6.2% of the company, including Castle Creek's stake. Guaranty is a bankholding company with 34 branches in Colorado under the Guaranty Bank and Trust Company name.

Castle Creek is one of three private equity firms that are structured as bank holding companies and thus have the ability to take controlling stakes in banks. The other two are Belvedere Capital and CapGen Financial. J. Christopher Flowers also manged to find away around the bankholding company rules when he acquired First National Bank of Cainesville by getting himself personally approved versus getting his private equity firm, J.C. Flowers approved.