Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 23, 1993                   TAG: 9304230139
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

A $63 BILLION BANK BOUNCES $20 CHECKS?

On April 5, some 13,000 former Dominion Bankshares Corp. shareholders received checks from First Union Corp., the Charlotte, N.C., company that bought Roanoke's lead bank. The checks - in most cases less than $20 - compensated shareholders for portions of Dominion stock not convertible to full shares of First Union.

The new First Union shareholders, flush from a deal that ended up paying nearly 18,000 of them handsomely, began wandering into their local banks, "fractional share" checks in hand.

More than 200 of them - 141 of them in Virginia - were rejected for insufficient funds.

That's right, a bank worth $63 billion bounced 212 checks.

"The money was there," First Union spokesman David Scanzoni said Thursday, "but there was a failure to move it between internal accounts."

A week after learning of the gaffe, First Union mailed letters to the "fractional share" recipients apologizing "for any problems we may have caused you."

"If you incurred any charges in relation to the difficulty, please . . . send us a copy of the statement showing the related charges so that we may reimburse you for them."

So far, 11 shareholders - "We weren't deluged," Scanzoni said - have contacted First Union about the mix-up.