Executive Order  No. 23: (1st Series) Regulating bank operations during wartime

WHEREAS, the war emergency requires our savings banks and cooperative banks to provide all reasonable safeguards against every contingency and to build and maintain reserves greater than are deemed necessary in times of peace; and

WHEREAS, the existing statutes compel the payment of extra dividends when the reserves of such banks have attained certain maximum limits, thus preventing the creation and maintenance of larger reserves:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Leverett Saltonstall, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, acting under the authority of Acts of 1942, chapter 13, section 2 (14), and all other authority vested in me, do hereby issue this order as a measure necessary and expedient for meeting the supreme emergency of the existing state of war between the United States and certain foreign countries.

1. Those provisions of General Laws (Ter. Ed.) chapter 168, section 50, as amended, and General Laws (Ter. Ed.) chapter 170, section 46, as amended, or any other provision of law, which require the declaration and payment of extra dividends by savings banks and co-operative banks are hereby suspended for the duration of the existing war.

2. During the period of such suspension, no extra dividend may be declared or paid by a savings bank except upon the authorization of its board of trustees, and then only with the written approval of the Commissioner of Banks. In no case shall any extra dividend be declared or paid if the effect thereof would be to reduce the total of the Guaranty Fund and Profit and Loss Account of a savings bank to less than fifteen (15) per cent of said bank's deposits.

3. During the period of such suspension, no extra dividend may be declared or paid by a co-operative bank except upon the authorization of its board of directors, and then only with the written approval of the Commissioner of Banks. In no case shall any extra dividend be paid or declared if the effect thereof would be to reduce the total of the Guaranty Fund and Surplus Account of a co-operative bank to less than ten (10) per cent of said bank's total liabilities.

GIVEN at the Executive Chamber in Boston, this nineteenth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and forty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America, the one hundred and sixty-sixth.

By His Excellency the Governor,
LEVERETT SALTONSTALL.

FREDERIC W. COOK,
Secretary of the Commonwealth.