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Guarantees
6 Months Ended
Jun. 30, 2011
Guarantees  
Guarantees
5. Guarantees
     The Company, as a provider of financial services, routinely issues financial guarantees in the form of financial and performance standby letters of credit. Standby letters of credit are contingent commitments issued by the Company generally to guarantee the payment or performance obligation of a customer to a third party. While these represent a potential outlay by the Company, a significant amount of the commitments may expire without being drawn upon. The Company has recourse against the customer for any amount it is required to pay to a third party under a standby letter of credit. The letters of credit are subject to the same credit policies, underwriting standards and approval process as loans made by the Company. Most of the standby letters of credit are secured and in the event of nonperformance by the customers, the Company has rights to the underlying collateral, which could include commercial real estate, physical plant and property, inventory, receivables, cash and marketable securities.
     Upon issuance of standby letters of credit, the Company recognizes a liability for the fair value of the obligation undertaken, which is estimated to be equivalent to the amount of fees received from the customer over the life of the agreement. At June 30, 2011 that net liability was $3.9 million, which will be accreted into income over the remaining life of the respective commitments. The contractual amount of these letters of credit, which represents the maximum potential future payments guaranteed by the Company, was $319.6 million at June 30, 2011.
     The Company periodically enters into risk participation agreements (RPAs) as a guarantor to other financial institutions, in order to mitigate those institutions' credit risk associated with interest rate swaps with third parties. The RPA stipulates that, in the event of default by the third party on the interest rate swap, the Company will reimburse a portion of the loss borne by the financial institution. These interest rate swaps are normally collateralized (generally with real property, inventories and equipment) by the third party, which limits the credit risk associated with the Company's RPAs. The third parties usually have other borrowing relationships with the Company. The Company monitors overall borrower collateral, and at June 30, 2011, believes sufficient collateral is available to cover potential swap losses. The RPAs are carried at fair value throughout their term, with all changes in fair value, including those due to a change in the third party's creditworthiness, recorded in current earnings. The terms of the RPAs, which correspond to the terms of the underlying swaps, range from 5 to 10 years. At June 30, 2011, the liability recorded for guarantor RPAs was $373 thousand, and the notional amount of the underlying swaps was $79.4 million. The maximum potential future payment guaranteed by the Company cannot be readily estimated, but is dependent upon the fair value of the interest rate swaps at the time of default. If an event of default on all contracts had occurred at June 30, 2011, the Company would have been required to make payments of approximately $4.6 million.
     At December 31, 2010, the Company carried a liability of $4.4 million representing its obligation to share certain estimated litigation costs of Visa, Inc. (Visa). An escrow account established by Visa is used to fund actual litigation settlements as they occur. The escrow account was funded initially with proceeds from an initial public offering and subsequently funded with contributions by Visa. The Company's indemnification obligation is periodically adjusted to reflect changes in estimates of litigation costs, and is reduced as funding occurs in the escrow account. Additional funding occurred during March 2011 when Visa contributed $400 million to the escrow account. As a result, the Company reduced its obligation by $1.4 million at that time, bringing its liability balance to $3.1 million as of June 30, 2011. The Company currently anticipates that its proportional share of eventual escrow funding will more than offset its liability related to the Visa litigation.