In what is probably the last night for bank collapses in 2011, regulators closed banks in Florida and Arizona, bringing the year's failure tally to 92.
The two Friday failures will likely cap the slowest year for bank seizures since the financial crisis began in 2008, when only 25 banks were closed. There were 155 failures last year and 140 in 2009.
The two failures are expected to cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $68.8 million.
Although there are two Fridays left this year, regulators traditionally do not fail banks close to major holidays like Christmas or New Year's Day.
It is fitting, then, that the final night started in Florida, where the first failure of the year occurred. The Florida Office of Financial Regulation closed the $126 million-asset Premier Community Bank of the Emerald Coast in Crestview. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. entered into an agreement with Summit Bank in Panama City to buy the bank's assets and assumed its $112.1 million in deposits. The buyer and the FDIC also agreed to a loss-sharing arrangement on $98 million of Premier Community's assets.
Premier Community was the 13th bank in Florida to fail in 2011 and its failure is expected to cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $31.2 million.
Later, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency closed the $162.9 million-asset Western National Bank in Phoenix. The $13.4 billion-asset Washington Federal in Seattle agreed to buy the bank's assets and assume its $144.5 million in deposits.
Western National was the third bank to fail in Arizona this year and is expected to cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $37.6 million.
The failures of 2011 were again dominated by places like Florida, Georgia and Illinois. Other mini-hubs popped up this year, too, including Colorado, which saw six failures after a 15-month hiatus in the Rockies. The banks that failed also tended to be smaller, while more first-time acquirers opted to buy banks without a loss-share agreement.
Bank failure observers say that 2012 will likely be a slower year for failures, but that there are more than 200 banks that could fail before the
