Chain Bridge Bancorp Inc (NYSE: CBNA) Part 1

Chain Bridge Bancorp, Inc (NYSE: CBNA), referred to as “Chain Bridge” or “the bank” for remainder of this writeup, is a high return on equity bank that caters to political organizations and campaigns, specifically those affiliated with the Republican Party, in the United States. Net income increased 137.2% in 2024 to $20.9 million from $8.8 million in 2023. Its return on average equity in 2024 and 2023 were 20.05% and 11.90%, respectively. Chain Bridge is headquartered in the mean streets of McLean, Virginia.

Before moving on I’d like to thank Derek Pilecki of Gator Capital for putting me on to this bank. He mentioned his investment in it during a podcast episode in 2024. Per TIKR, his fund owns ~6.50% of shares outstanding. His fund invests only in financial businesses and is about as good as it gets, so I thought Chain Bridge was worthy of further investigation.

History

Chain Bridge was started by Peter Fitzgerald, a former senator from Illinois and scion to a banking family in the Chicago area. A fun fact about him is that after leaving the Senate his seat was taken by none other than Barack Obama.

Peter’s father was Gerald Fitzgerald. Per his Wikipedia page, the elder Mr. Fitzgerald started Suburban Bancorp in the early 1960s and ended up selling it to Bank of Montreal in 1994 for $246 million. Not bad. The screencap below, also taken from his Wikipedia page, paints an interesting view of Mr. Fitzgerald’s business outlook.

I mention Gerald because I think his banking philosophy wore off on his son. I’ll comment more on this later.

Peter founded the bank in 2007. In what is one of those quirks in life, the founding of Chain Bridge may not have happened without the McLean Little League. By chance, a baseball league for the youth in Northern Virginia brought Peter together with other early investors in the bank.

The June 15, 2007, issue of American Banker goes on to highlight the plight local businessmen in the McLean area were facing. The TL;DR is that they felt the regional and megabanks in the area weren’t catering as well as they could to local businesses. Paul Shiffman, a founding member and former director of the bank, approached Peter Fitzgerald through connections in the Little League and got him to agree to run the operation. The original Board of Directors included six people involved in the McLean Little League. Mr. Fitzgerald went on to get management in place and, per the article, raised $18.2 million with the other founders and voila. They were in business.

From its founding, Chain Bridge has operated out of its headquarters in McLean, Virginia. It does not have a physical branch network.