May 20, 2014 For more information, contact:

Joan Cumbie 251-471-6191

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Regions Bank Found Liable for Fraud, Ordered to Pay Local Sewer Company Millions

Mobile, Ala. – Following a week-long trial in January, an arbitration panel has

found that Regions Bank bilked a local sewer company out of millions of dollars.

The panel concluded that Regions Bank defrauded Baldwin County Sewer by

selling the company a series of complex, interest rate swaps. Regions Bank was

ordered to provide Baldwin County Sewer with nearly $10 million in

compensation. The case is believed to be one of the first cases in the country

where a bank has been held liable for fraud in connection with the sale of an

interest rate swap.

The interest rate swaps were part of a financing package that Regions Bank

began marketing to small companies, churches, and non-profits in the early

2000s. As part of the financing packages, customers issued bonds that carried a

variable interest rate. These bonds were more profitable for the bank than

traditional loans. Baldwin County Sewer issued four series of these bonds. It also

purchased three interest rate swaps from Regions Bank. Regions Bank told

Baldwin County Sewer that the interest rate swaps would fix the sewer

company’s interest rate. However, when the market crashed in 2008, the sewer

company’s interest rate nearly doubled.

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Cunningham Bounds – Regions Bank, page 2

The arbitration panel found there was a “pervasive failure” within Regions Bank

to communicate the true risks of interest rate swaps to its customers and that

these failures constituted a “material misrepresentation.”

Regions Bank’s marketing and advertising campaigns were critical to the

panel’s award. The panel emphasized that Regions Bank “through its

advertising, repeatedly held itself out to the community as a ‘trusted advisor’”

and “assumed the relationship of an advisor, as well as being a creditor.”

Billy Bonner, an attorney for Baldwin County Sewer and a partner at the Mobile,

Alabama law firm of Cunningham Bounds, LLC, described the arbitration

panel’s award as “unprecedented.” In these types of cases, “banks typically

argue that the legalese in their loan documents bars a customer’s fraud claims,”

said Bonner, “but here the panel did not buy that argument. The panel held

Regions Bank accountable for the misrepresentations it made to its customer.”

Regions Bank had a limited right to appeal the award, but elected to satisfy the

award in full.

Bonner and his partner, Skip Finkbohner, both of Cunningham Bounds, LLC,

served as lead co-counsel in the case.

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The law firm of Cunningham Bounds, LLC, founded in 1958, is based in Mobile, Alabama and has

been representing plaintiffs for over 50 years. Today the firm continues its tradition of

representing victims in cases involving catastrophic personal injury, industrial accidents,

defective products, truck and automobile accidents, and medical malpractice. The firm also

has expertise in business litigation, complex litigation, and national and state class action

litigation involving defective products and consumer fraud.