Quaker Fabric declares cash dividend

Quaker Fabric, a leading manufacturer of woven upholstery fabrics for domestic and international furniture markets, and the world’s largest producer of Jacquard upholstery fabric, also announced that its board of directors has adopted a new dividend policy reflecting the company’s goal to pay quarterly dividends going forward. The level of each dividend payment, if any, will be determined by Quaker Fabric’s board of directors, based on factors including the company’s financial performance, cash flows and cash requirements.

For fiscal year ended Jan. 4, 2003, Quaker reported net sales of $3.65 billion, a 10.4 percent increase compared to 2001, or $34.3 million. It also reported a net income of $11.6 million and diluted earnings per share of 69 cents for the year, compared to a net income of $9.5 million and diluted earnings per share of 58 cents for 2001.

Seacoast Financial appoints
two senior officers

NEW BEDFORD – Seacoast Financial Services Corporation, the New Bedford-based holding company of CompassBank and Nantucket Bank, recently announced that it has appointed two new senior officers to its subsidiary, CompassBank.

Joseph F. Casey has joined the bank as senior vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer. Casey will also serve as vice president of Seacoast Financial. Before joining the bank, he served as CFO and treasurer of Andover Bancorp, Inc., which was acquired by BankNorth.

Mark T. Langone has joined Compass Bank as senior vice president and will serve as vice president of Seacoast Financial. He will be responsible for overseeing the risk management function of Seacoast. Langone has more than 12 years of experience as a bank examiner for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Compass Bank is a $3.2 billion state chartered savings bank serving southeastern Massachusetts through a network of 40 full service branch officers and 46 branch and remote ATMs, a customer call center and on-line banking.