Regulators shut down banks in Nevada and Washington on Friday, marking the 21st and 22nd failures this year of federally insured banks.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of Carson River Community Bank, based in Carson City, Nev. and Rainier Pacific Bank in Tacoma, Wash.

Carson River Community Bank had $51.1 million in assets and $50 million in deposits as of Dec. 31. Rainier Pacific Bank had $717.8 million in assets and $446.2 million in deposits as of Dec. 31.

The FDIC said that Carson River’s deposits will be assumed by Reno, Nev.-based Heritage Bank of Nevada. Carson River’s lone branch will reopen Monday as an office of Heritage Bank.

Source/Full Story:   Yahoo! News

Nine more U.S. banks, all owned by the same Illinois holding company, were closed Friday by regulators, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said U.S. Bank of Minneapolis would assume their deposits.

The closings brought the 2009 total to 115 in 2009 — the first year since 1992 that more than 100 banks have gone under.
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The deposit insurance fund will take an estimated $2.5 billion hit, the FDIC said.

All nine banks were subsidiaries of FBOP Corp., a holding company based in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Ill., according to the FDIC.

Source/Full Story: MarketWatch

Reporting from Washington – Despite signs of economic improvement, banks continue to fail at a brisk pace, forcing regulators to scramble to keep the industry-financed deposit insurance fund from running out of cash.

With the fund technically falling into the red today, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposed Tuesday to require banks this year to prepay $45 billion, or more than three years’ worth, of insurance premiums.

The move would allow the FDIC to avoid drawing on a $500-billion line of credit the agency has with the Treasury Department.

“It’s clear that the American people would prefer to see an end to policies that look to the federal balance sheet as a remedy for every problem,” said FDIC chief Sheila C. Bair. “In choosing this path, it should be clear to the public that the industry will not simply tap the shoulder of the increasingly weary taxpayer.”

Insured bank deposits continue to be “100% safe,” Bair emphasized, and analysts agreed.

Kevin Petrasic, a former special counsel at the Office of Thrift Supervision, described the FDIC’s decision, which is open for public comment for 30 days, “as the least objectionable of some not particularly good options.”

Source/Full Story: latimes.com
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Atlanta’s Georgian Bank became the 95th bank failure of the year, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday.

Source/Full Story: MarketWatch
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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is weighing several costly — and never-before-used — options as it struggles to shore up the dwindling fund that insures bank deposits.

The agency is considering borrowing billions from healthy banks. Alternatively, it may impose a special fee on the banking industry.

Each option carries risk: Drawing money from healthy banks would take dollars out of the private sector, making that money unavailable for investment in the weak economy. But charging the whole industry a fee to replenish the fund could push weaker banks toward failure.

A third option — borrowing from the Treasury — is politically unpalatable, since it would resemble another taxpayer-financed bailout.

A fourth option would be to have banks pay their regular insurance premiums early. But this idea wouldn’t solve the fund’s long-term cash needs.

“The bottom line is, there’s no good solution,” said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with the research firm Concept Capital. “This is a fight over which option is least bad.”

The FDIC is expected to propose a solution, possibly combining two or more of the options, at a board meeting next week.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! Finance
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U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The Treasury’s $700 billion bank-investment program represents a fraction of all federal support to resuscitate the U.S. financial system, including $6.8 trillion in aid offered by the Federal Reserve, Barofsky said in a report released today.

“TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity,” Barofsky said in testimony prepared for a hearing tomorrow before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said the U.S. has spent less than $2 trillion so far and that Barofsky’s estimates are flawed because they don’t take into account assets that back those programs or fees charged to recoup some costs shouldered by taxpayers.

“These estimates of potential exposures do not provide a useful framework for evaluating the potential cost of these programs,” Williams said. “This estimate includes programs at their hypothetical maximum size, and it was never likely that the programs would be maxed out at the same time.”

Barofsky’s estimates include $2.3 trillion in programs offered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., $7.4 trillion in TARP and other aid from the Treasury and $7.2 trillion in federal money for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, credit unions, Veterans Affairs and other federal programs.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com
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U.S. regulators are set to buttress their defenses this week against a slew of sick banks still facing closure and the risks to the dwindling fund that protects depositors.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp has been looking at expanding the pool of potential bidders for distressed banks, providing some capital relief for troubled assets that will soon be brought back onto banks’ books, and charging further industry premiums to replenish the insurance fund.

All of these moves are geared to get the banking industry, and the agency charged with ensuring the industry’s safety, through a financial crunch that is coming to a head.

“We’re working through this problem. We’re not at the beginning, we’re not at the end,” said James Chessen, chief economist for the American Bankers Association. “We’re in the middle and it’s painful.”

Regulators have shuttered 81 banks so far this year, compared with 25 last year, and three in 2007. Analysts say the wave of failures is far from over. Richard Bove of Rochdale Securities said on Sunday that 150 to 200 more U.S. banks will fail in the current banking crisis, which started with a dramatic fall in housing prices that sent the economy into a recession and caused many borrowers to default on their loans.

Bove said the continuing failures will force the FDIC to turn increasingly to non-U.S. banks and private equity funds to shore up the banking system.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

Guaranty Bank of Austin, Tex. became the 81st bank failure of 2009 after it was closed by Office of Thrift Supervision, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as receiver, the federal agency said late Friday. The FDIC said it has entered into a “purchase and assumption agreement” with BBVA Compass of Birmingham, Ala. As of June 30, Guaranty Bank had total assets about $13 billion and total deposits of about $12 billion.

Source/Full Story: MarketWatch

Regulators have shut down Colonial BancGroup Inc. CNB-N , a big lender in real estate development that buckled under the collapse of the market. It was the biggest U.S. bank to fail this year, with about $25-billion in assets.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial. The agency approved the sale of Colonial’s $20-billion in deposits and about $22-billion of its assets to BB&T Corp. The failed bank’s 346 branches in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Texas will reopen at the normal times starting on Saturday as offices of BB&T, the FDIC said.

BB&T, based in Winston-Salem, N.C., operates throughout the Southeast and is considered among the nation’s stronger regional banks.

The failure of Colonial is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund an estimated $2.8-billion.

The bank was a major lender to developers in Florida and Nevada and was hit hard by the collapse of the real estate market in those states.

Colonial BancGroup shut by regulators – The Globe and Mail

Four more banks failed according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday, bringing the year’s total to 68, and to 93 failed banks since the beginning of the recession. First BankAmericano of Elizabeth, N.J., will have its deposits transferred to Crown Bank, Brick, N.J.; Peoples Community Bank of West Chester, Ohio, will have deposits sent to First Financial Bank of Hamilton, Ohio; Integrity Bank of Jupiter, Fla., will transfer deposits to Stonegate Bank of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; and First State Bank of Altus in Altus, Okla. will transfer deposits to Herring Bank of Amarillo, Texas.

Source/Full Story: MarketWatch

The survival of CIT Group Inc, a key source of financing for thousands of small and medium-sized companies, became ensnared in disagreements between regulators in Washington on Monday.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, which insures deposits at U.S. banks, opposed an attempt by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to rescue the lender by granting it access to a government debt-guarantee program, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The prices of CIT shares and bonds tumbled as investors worried the commercial lender would not be able to meet its obligations to bondholders, perhaps pushing the company into bankruptcy and disrupting the financing on which its corporate customers depend.

CIT’s difficulties are “going to make funding more expensive all around,” said Dan Brown, chief economist for Euler Hermes, a unit of insurer Allianz SE.

The lender’s failure would be the biggest collapse of a financial firm since regulators seized Washington Mutual Inc in September.

It is not the first time in recent months that there has been a disagreement between the FDIC and the Treasury and Federal Reserve. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, who is well-liked by key congressional leaders, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have battled over policy and turf, according to numerous reports.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

U.S. small businesses, already facing the toughest credit conditions since the 1980s, may soon find things are about to get tougher.

Concerns over the future of CIT Corp (CIT.N) — a major lender to small businesses — which provides capital in situations where many commercial banks fear to tread, makes small business advocates wary about the next few months.

Since small business is typically a major driver of the U.S. economy, any barrier to this sector’s recovery could mean a longer, slower U.S. economic revival, and could limit the effectiveness of the government’s stimulus dollars.

CIT has tried various capital-raising plans, including growing its retail bank and selling assets and stock, to pay off maturing debt and avoid further ratings downgrades.

CIT said it was talking to the U.S. government to gain access to funding, but that there was no guarantee the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp would approve its application to join the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. That has exacerbated a liquidity crunch and led CIT To explore a possible bankruptcy filing, The Wall Street Journal said.

“The CIT crisis takes a lending source that’s been relatively active in a very tight credit market and eliminates one more source of capital,” said Ken Gaebler, president of Gaebler Ventures LLC, a consultancy that helps entrepreneurs raise capital and acts as a business incubator.

CIT’s failure, if it happens, would pull existing lines of credit, forcing creditors to seek alternative funding.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is gearing up to handle a large number of bank failures expected as a result of bad mortgages, both in residential and commercial real estate, an economist says.

“They know they’re going to take down a large number of banks and they can’t do it until they’re staffed up,” said Mark Dotzour, chief economist and director of research for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, at a real estate conference in Tampa, Fla., Tuesday.

Dotzour expects federal regulators to establish an agency, similar to the Resolution Trust Corp. that disposed of assets belonging to insolvent S&Ls in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“Once they start to sell [foreclosed real estate], we’ll find out what the market really is,” Dotzour said.

Dotzour blamed federal intervention for the lack of commercial real estate investment activity in recent months, as well as the failure of businesses to make major decisions.

“Nobody knows what to do so they’re doing nothing,” Dotzour said.

Government, in its quest to help the economy, is causing harm by propping up failing companies and regularly changing rules, he said.

“People are frozen. It’s not that they don’t want to invest in the future, the rules are unclear,” he said.

Source/Full Story: Baltimore Business Journal

Five U.S. banks with total assets of about $1.04 billion were seized by regulators, pushing this year’s tally of failures to 45 as a recession drives up unemployment and home foreclosures.

Community Bank of West Georgia, in Villa Rica, Georgia; Neighborhood Community Bank of Newnan, Georgia; Horizon Bank of Pine City, Minnesota; MetroPacific Bank of Irvine, California; and Mirae Bank of Los Angeles were closed yesterday by state regulators, according to statements from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC was named receiver of the four banks.

Wilshire Bancorp’s Wilshire State Bank will take over all of Mirae’s $362 million in deposits, and will purchase $449 million of assets, the FDIC said in a statement.

Sunwest Bank of Tustin, California, acquired most of MetroPacific’s $73 million in deposits and $80 million in assets, the FDIC said. Stearns Bank of St. Cloud, Minnesota, bought Horizon Bank’s $69.4 million of deposits. Stearns will purchase $84.4 million of Horizon’s assets, the FDIC said.

The FDIC didn’t find a buyer for Community Bank of West Georgia, and said it will mail checks to reimburse insured depositors. The bank has deposits of $182.5 million. Charter Financial Corp.’s CharterBank will assume Neighborhood Community Bank’s $191.3 million of deposits and purchased some assets in a loss-share agreement with the FDIC, according to the agency.

“The loss-sharing arrangement is projected to maximize returns on the assets covered by keeping them in the private sector,” the FDIC said. “The agreement also is expected to minimize disruptions for loan customers.”

Regulators have seized the most U.S. banks this year since 1993. The U.S. economy has shed about 6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Foreclosure filings surpassed 300,000 for the third straight month in May, according to RealtyTrac Inc.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

Banks in Georgia, North Carolina and Kansas with total assets of $1.5 billion were closed yesterday, bringing this year’s tally of failures in the U.S. to 40 amid the highest unemployment in a quarter century.

State regulators shut Southern Community bank of Fayetteville, Georgia and Cooperative Bank in Wilmington, North Carolina. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency closed First National Bank of Anthony, Kansas. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named as receiver for all three, according to statements from the FDIC.

Southern Community’s $307 million in deposits were bought by United Community Bank of Blairsville, Georgia, and most of Cooperative’s $774 million in deposits went to First Bank in Troy, North Carolina, the FDIC said. Bank of Kansas in South Hutchinson acquired First Bank’s $142.5 million in deposits. The acquiring banks are taking over a combined $1.47 billion in assets, mostly loans, from the failed institutions, and signed agreements with the FDIC to share more than 80 percent of the losses with the government.

“The loss-sharing arrangement is projected to maximize returns on the assets covered by keeping them in the private sector,” the FDIC said in each statement. “The agreement also is expected to minimize disruptions for loan customers.”

Regulators this year have closed the most banks since 1993, as the loss of jobs contributes to mounting home foreclosures and loan delinquencies. The U.S. economy contracted at a 5.7 percent annual pace in the first quarter. More than a quarter of all states have unemployment rates higher than 10 percent, the Labor Department said yesterday.

Source/Full Story: Banks in Georgia, North Carolina, Kansas Closed by Regulators – Bloomberg.com