Bank of Florida Given New Orders

More than two months after regulators issued what ordinarily are final warnings to Bank of Florida Corp., the company's banks have received a fresh set of marching orders.

On Wednesday, the $1.4 billion-asset company in Naples disclosed it had received Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. consent orders for its three critically undercapitalized banks on May 20 and May 21, more than a month after prompt-corrective-action directives to the banks expired.

Banking attorneys describe prompt-corrective-action directives as notices that typically follow consent orders and are the final warning to banks to raise capital or face seizure. Consent orders this late, they said, are likely about having a proper paper trail on the banks should they fail.

The prompt-corrective-action orders, issued to its Tampa Bay, southeast and southwest units in mid-March, gave the banks until April 17 to reach adequately capitalized status or face seizure. In a first-quarter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 17, the company acknowledged that its banks had missed the deadline and were critically undercapitalized, warning that their failures could be imminent.

"If, in the very near term, we are not successful in our current $71.8 million capital-raising effort, it is likely that each of the three banks will be closed by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation and placed into receivership with the FDIC," the company said in the filing.

Calls to Bank of Florida were not returned Thursday.

The new orders from the FDIC require the banks to become adequately capitalized and within 30 days to submit a plan to boost leverage ratios to 8% and total risk-based capital ratios to 12%.

As of March 31, the southwest unit had a leverage ratio of minus-1.57% and a total risk-based capital ratio of minus-1.96%. At its southeast bank unit those ratios were 1.60% and 4.34%, respectively. Tampa Bay's ratios were 0.75% and 1.91%, respectively. As of March 31, nonperforming assets were 12.83% of total assets.

Bank of Florida has been trying to raise capital for months. In the fourth quarter it began a $135 million offering but called it off after larger-than-expected industry losses scared off investors. It tried again in March, halving the amount, enough to adequately capitalize its banks.

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