Emigrant Savings Bank of N.Y. Sold to Developers

Emigrant Savings Bank, founded in the 1850s to provide loans for Irish immigrants and now the nation’s 18th-largest bank, was sold last week to two New York real estate developers, a newspaper reported.

Seymour and Paul Milstein agreed to provide $90 million in fresh capital to Emigrant to acquire the bank, said David Halvorsen, an attorney for the state Banking Department, which approved the sale. The bank had trouble finding a buyer, Halvorsen told the New York Times.

Emigrant, like other savings banks, lost money in the early 1980s because of high interest rates and limits on what it could charge for loans, but it has been profitable with earnings of about $26 million in the first 11 months of 1986, the newspaper reported in Sunday’s editions.