With the insight he had gained into the credit and collections industries, Mr. Hanna
started a new venture collection agency for $1.7 million. He sold it five years
later for $120 million. In 1997, he co-founded one of the largest collectors of
U.S. government student loans, expanded it as a service provider for the nation's
largest credit card issuers, and sold the company in 2004 for $190 million. He also
purchased out of bankruptcy a 1700-acre assemblage of land in an Atlanta suburb
for an aggregate total of $8 million, which generated $150 million in returns.
Mr. Hanna's key investment strategy focuses on distressed assets. In his forty-plus
years of investing, he has sought out distressed assets including mortgages, credit
card portfolios, land, houses, apartments, shopping centers, office buildings, hotels,
etc. His distressed corporate assets portfolio alone has generated over $500 million
in returns. He has acquired, managed and sold over $2 Billion of real estate investments.Along
the way, he established private investment companies and lucrative partnerships.
Mr. Hanna formally entered into the bank business in 2003 with the purchase of a
minority savings and loan bank in Orlando, Florida. He took on as partner Robert
L. Johnson, the multi-billionaire African-American founder of Black Entertainment
Television (BET) and RLJ Companies, which controls a diverse portfolio of hotel,
restaurant, professional sports franchise, film production, gaming and recording
industries. During the past year, Urban Trust tripled its assets and increased from
one branch to fifteen.
This rapid growth was facilitated in part by Urban Trust Bank’s strategic partnering
with Wal-Mart to establish branches inside select Wal-Mart Supercenters.