Jul. 12--The fact that Vineyard Bank hasn't been bought by another bank or taken over by federal regulators has some banking specialists scratching their heads.

The bank's holding company, Corona-based Vineyard National Bancorp, has been flying under the radar since its common and preferred shares were delisted from major stock exchanges and bumped down to a penny stock exchange in April.

"I think the regulators have so many other issues right now that as long as the liquidity is decent, they're keeping banks like Vineyard open," said Joey Warmenhoven, banking specialist at Seattle-based investment firm McAdams Wright Ragen.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has had Vineyard Bank under its watchful eye since mid-2008 -- and the holding company's regulator, the Federal Reserve Board, is keeping watch as well.

Several institutions on Warmenhoven's list of soon-to-fail community banks haven't been taken over by regulators or sold, which is odd, he says.

However, it doesn't mean their troubles have gone away.

"Just looking purely at the capital ratios and loan problems, I think they need a miracle," Warmenhoven said about Vineyard. "I think maybe the regulators haven't found anyone to take the branches and deposits. The other problem is that private equity isn't looking at banks like this."

Vineyard's troubles probably go further than is evident, according to Michael Natzic, senior vice president at Stone &

Youngberg LLC's office in Big Bear Lake.

He said Vineyard was the lead partner with other West Coast community banks in loan pools, where several institutions threw their money together to make big residential construction loans during the housing market boom.

That information doesn't have to be disclosed to shareholders, which means the full extent of the bank's problems probably go much deeper than what's been disclosed in its parent company's public filings, he said.

"If you look at smaller community banks out there that are having loan problems, the vast majority of those are in participation with Vineyard," Natzic said. "It's an interesting web."

Since Vineyard's first-quarter 2009 and annual 2008 reports were not filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on time, what was filed in place of those reports are unaudited documents.

"You go through these periods of silence where there's zero information coming out on them," Natzic said. "I'm amazed we haven't heard anything on them."

Second quarter Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.