Bank in Washington State Seized in Year's First Failure

Westside Community Bank in University Place, Wash., became the first failed institution of 2013 late Friday.

State regulators seized the $98 million-asset bank and handed the keys to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC announced a sale of the failed bank’s two branches and essentially all of its assets to Sunwest Bank in Irvine, Calif.

The acquirer will assume all of Westside Community's $96 million in deposits. The branches will reopen under Sunwest management on Monday. The failure was estimated to cost the FDIC about $20 million.

It was the first failure in Washington state since the August 2011 closure of Bank of Whitman, which was located in Colfax.

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