PEOPLE.

• Position: Statistical Data Included

Publisher wants to bank on no-account Hispanics

If Hollywood wrote a script about the ideal champion of Hispanic-friendly banking in North Carolina, chances are he wouldn't be named Mike Leary. His Irish ancestry aside, Leary still doesn't seem to fit the role. He's not a banker and doubts he has enough spare cash to invest in a bank start-up. He even seems miscast in his day job -- publisher of La Conexion, a Raleigh-based Spanish-language newspaper. He never studied journalism, went straight from delivery man to publisher and says he's still trying to figure out the newspaper business.

Yet Leary, 37, who claims Spanish and "Redneck" as his official languages, has become the unofficial spokesperson for an effort to form a bank that caters to Hispanics. Many Hispanics lack Social Security numbers, required to open interest-bearing accounts, and don't know how to get tax-identification numbers needed for noninterest-bearing accounts.

Three years ago, Leary's Mexican-born financee (now his wife), Lupita, was carrying around $3,500 because she didn't have a bank account. Leary fired off a letter to The News & Observer of Raleigh. A bank vice president read it and helped Lupita set up a noninterest-bearing account, but other Latinos were stonewalled by low-level bankers who didn't know the procedure.

So Leary started pushing for a new bank that would use Spanish documents, Spanish-speaking tellers trained to open accounts with tax-identification numbers and education programs for Hispanics.

Leary's interest in Latino affairs dates to the mid-'80s and debates with his conservative grandmother about the Iran-Contra affair and U.S. policy toward Latin America. Growing up in Raleigh, he took six years of Spanish at the private Ravenscroft School. He dropped out of Appalachian State University in 1981 and worked odd jobs before returning for a bachelor's in business administration in 1989.

In 1995, Leary was delivering newspapers to a convenience store, a sideline to a courier business he had started, when he noticed some idle Spanish-speaking construction workers. They showed no interest in the paper he delivered, but he figured they might read a Spanish-language newspaper. He and a roommate, Angel Robles, pooled $2,999 from their savings and started La Conexion.

With four full-time employees, La Conexion had 1998 revenues of $380,000, mostly from advertising. Leary expects 1999 revenues of $500,000. He bought out Robles in March 1998, diverting...