OneUnited skips third payment

The Nov. 16 payment appears to be the third quarterly dividend the bank has skipped or deferred since receiving the US funds last December. However, the Treasury Department said banks are not required to make payments each quarter.

“Institutions must make their own determination about whether to declare, and therefore pay, a dividend,’’ said Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly.

OneUnited could not be reached for comment.

Prior to skipping the November payment, OneUnited, which is based in Boston and has significant operations in Los Angeles, had not paid $301,575 in dividends. The Treasury Department data suggest it did make a $93,823 payment in February, but did not make payments in May, August, and November.

In most cases, when banks skip a dividend payment it is added to the amount they eventually must repay the government. But institutions without a holding company, such as OneUnited, are not required to make up the dividend payments, essentially giving them a no-interest loan, said Russ Yates of SNL Research.

However, there are other consequences. If OneUnited and other banks do not pay the quarterly dividends to the government, they cannot pay dividends to their regular shareholders that quarter, either. Because the government holds preferred stock, it is first to receive dividends.

Moreover, Treasury has the right to appoint two members to a bank’s board of directors if a bank misses six quarterly dividend payments, its spokeswoman said. For OneUnited, that would mean not making three more payments.

Nationwide, 38 of the more than 600 banks that received government aid had missed a dividend payment as of Oct. 31, the government reported. OneUnited was the only Massachusetts bank on the list. For most banks that received government aid, the dividend is 5 percent on the borrowed amount, rising to 9 percent after five years.

The Congressional Oversight Panel on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, chaired by Harvard University law professor Elizabeth Warren, reported this month that there are a variety of reasons why a bank would not pay the dividend: Some have been pushed by regulators, for instance, to hold onto the money instead to boost reserves.

The panel noted that “a failure to pay dividends, however, can foretell larger problems for a bank.’’ For example, Pacific Coast National Bancorp failed shortly after it was blocked from paying dividends without approval from federal regulators.

So far, five of the 10 Massachusetts banks that received aid as of the end of November have repaid the government. Of the remaining banks, all but OneUnited are eventually required to repay the government if they miss a dividend payment, according to Treasury data.

OneUnited was going through a rough patch last year when it received the government aid. Its capital reserves fell below acceptable limits after more than $50 million of investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became worthless in 2008 when the mortgage agencies were taken over by the government. In October, bank regulators ordered OneUnited to improve its finances and cut back on compensation and perks to executives, including a Porsche SUV and beachfront mansion in Santa Monica, Calif., used by chief executive Kevin Cohee.

To shore up its finances, OneUnited said it raised $20 million from private investors and then received $12.1 million in government aid. US Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat, acknowledged intervening on OneUnited’s behalf.

US Representative Maxine Waters is under investigation by the US House Ethics Committee after she arranged a meeting between OneUnited executives and members of the Treasury Department to discuss the plight of minority-owned banks. Waters’s husband previously served as a director the bank and owned stock in it. In its most recent financial statements, OneUnited reported assets declining by 10 percent to $561 million over the 12 months ending Sept. 30. But it also reported $3.1 million in profits through the first nine months of the year, compared to $44.7 million in losses during the same period a year ago.

Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@globe.com.