Monday, April 27, 2009
Despite improving conditions in the stock market and President Barack Obama’s own pronouncements of signs of economic progress, banks are continuing to fail—at a rate much worse than last year. In 2008, 25 banks failed. So far in 2009, with only four months gone, 29 failures have been reported by state and federal regulators. The latest banks to go under were American Southern Bank of Kennesaw, Georgia; Michigan Heritage Bank in Farmington Hills; First Bank of Beverly Hills in Calabasas, California; and First Bank of Idaho in Ketchum. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named receiver of all four, whose total assets amounted to $2.3 billion.
The seizures will cost the FDIC’s insurance fund a total of $698.4 million, with more than half of that coming from the shuttering of the Beverly Hills bank. That’s because the FDIC was unable to find a buyer for First Bank of Beverly Hills, forcing the government to assume the institution’s $1.5 billion in assets.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Regulators Shut Banks in Georgia, Michigan, California, Idaho (by Margaret Chadbourn and Ari Levy, Bloomberg)
Comments