I don't like all these mergers, said Bernard Futter, president of Futter Lumber Corp. in Rockville Centre. Consolidation commonly affects service negatively, according to banking experts. Edgar Goodale, president of Riverhead Building Supply Corp., whose company has been around for 50 years, said he steers clear of large money-center banks. We dealt with a bank that merged several times over and we noticed that the loan documents got thicker and so did the layers of management, said Goodale, who banks with Riverhead-based Suffolk Bancorp. We finally got tired of it.
People get tired of getting the corporate tour every six months.
Except for banks, consolidation benefits no one. Goodale said he likes the personal attention he gets from a smaller bank and expects many smaller Long Island banks will benefit from Citibank's re-emergence in the market. Even if the integration of Citibank and EAB goes smoothly, the newly merged company still has much to prove. Critics said that while Citibank has a good name when it comes to its overseas operations and credit cards, does not have such a good name when it comes to middle-market lending. It also failed when it tried to do the same thing under Walter Wriston in the '70s.