Howard Bancorp, the parent company of Howard Bank has received a non-objection letter from the Federal Reserve Bank, of Richmond, Va., to allow the company to repurchase shares of its common stock. Under the repurchase program, management is authorized to repurchase an aggregate amount of up to $7 million of the outstanding shares of the company’s common stock. The program will expire in December of 2020.

“Howard Bancorp remains committed to enhancing long term shareholder value and in this challenging market for bank stocks,” said Mary Ann Scully, board chair and CEO. “We see this program as an additional capital management tool to complement our continued growth, revenue and expense management emphasis.”

Under the stock repurchase program, shares of common stock may be repurchased by the company from time to time in open market transactions or in privately negotiated transactions as permitted under applicable rules and regulations or through a 10b5-1 trading plan under the Exchange Act, which would permit shares to be repurchased when the Company might otherwise be precluded from doing so because of self-imposed trading blackout periods or other regulatory restrictions.