Bank Closures and Other FDIC News

With today being a holiday, I thought we might go another week without a bank failure, but the FDIC just came out with this press release on the closure of Cape Fear Bank in North Carolina. I'll do my usual bank-closure post detailing this failure along with any other additional bank failures later today. In the mean time, I have some other non-closure FDIC news.

There have been a few reports of banks this week that have received orders from the FDIC and other regulators to perform necessary actions in order to avoid a possible takeover. The banks include:

• Venture Bank of WA State, parent of Venture Bank Direct (see post), is "facing regulatory challenges" according to The News Tribune
• Guaranty Bank of TX with branches in CA (see post) has 6 weeks to improve its financial health according to the Dallas Morning News
• Michigan Heritage Bank (my post on its reward checking) was told it has until April 15th to find a buyer, merge with another bank or find investors to avoid a possible takeover according to Crain's Detroit Business

On Wednesday, CNN published this article of their interview with Sheila Bair, the FDIC chair. According to the article, "Forbes magazine calls her the second most powerful woman in the world, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel." It's an interesting interview with tidbits of her personal life and the latest issues facing the FDIC. We may be seeing more of her since there's talk in Washington of expanding the FDIC powers to allow it to take over insolvent financial firms like AIG.

Another interesting interview of Bair was done by 60 Minutes last month. That 60 Minutes piece also covered the FDIC in action during a recent bank failure.

To review the recent bank closures and to learn about FDIC rules, refer to the following:

• FDIC list of failed banks
• Last 20 of my bank failure posts
• Status of Making the $250K FDIC Limit Permanent
• Recent FDIC and NCUA deposit insurance changes
• 10 Lessons from the 2008 bank failures
• Review of the 2008 credit union liquidations