SALT LAKE CITY — The struggle over whether the $187 million Beehive Credit Union changes to a mutual bank made the front pages of the Salt Lake Tribune's business section on Jan. 12. The article discussed the efforts of some Beehive members to oppose the conversion and sharing some of the CU's arguments in favor of it.

Significantly, while the article shared the fact that the CU cited a study it said it had done about rates at CUs which had converted, it did not reveal that the study cited had not been done by Beehive but Peter Duffy, an associate director with Sandler O'Neill, an investment banking firm.

The article also did not reveal that NCUA has questioned the way the study was conducted in a letter to Beehive.

“We also don't understand why Mr. Duffy approached his study the way he did,” Melinda Love, NCUA's Regional Director for Region 5 wrote in a Dec. 28 letter. “In his study, he attempts to back into the average rates at converted credit unions by using data from FDIC and NCUA call reports and making various assumptions about that data, both stated and unstated. We fail to understand the value to such an indirect approach, particularly when there is direct evidence available to compare the actual rates at banks, credit unions, and banks that have converted from or merged from credit unions,” she wrote.