If their financial statements are honest, then they probably are doing this to raise relatively inexpensive cash ,as the Mercury-News blogger suggests, and not out of distress. A small bank like this would have trouble issuing preferred debt at 5% in flush times and certainly not in today’s credit markets. Hockey fans may question what a bank that made loans to Boots Del Biaggio would do with this money but there probably aren’t many hockey fans at the US Treasury. The warrants Treasury (US taxpayers) gets were insisted on by Congress:one economist has called them “truly idiotic” since they dilute the common shares.I don’t know about that but attaching the term “truly idiotic” to anything Congress does is probably a safe bet.
On another subject (NHL demographics), if you look at the draft figures the NHL puts out (1991-2007), Europeans have made up about 35% of those drafted so the 27% you found currently in the league is a significant drop. The “missing Russians” make up a large part of that, almost 10% of all players drafted in that time period have been Russian and I would think undrafted free agents (maybe 10% of all players) would be a factor. There are few Europeans (Fabian Brunnstrom would be one) in that group.