Quote from texrex2002:
I thought for sure Guaranty banks would be on this week's list... maybe next week.
took a little while...but it happened late last night.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/21/us/politics/AP-US-Bank-Closures.html?_r=2
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators on Friday shut down Guaranty Bank, a big Texas-based lender felled by losses on loans to homebuilders and borrowers, in the second-largest U.S. bank failure this year.
Guaranty's failure, along with those of three banks in Georgia and Alabama Friday, brought to 81 the number of U.S. bank failures in 2009, a mounting toll and the most in a year since 1992 at the height of the savings-and-loan crisis.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Guaranty Bank, with about $13 billion in assets and $12 billion in deposits, and sold all of its deposits and $12 billion of the assets to BBVA Compass, the U.S. division of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, Spain's second-largest bank. It was the first foreign bank to buy a failed U.S. bank. In addition, the FDIC agreed to share losses with BBVA on about $11 billion of Guaranty Bank's assets.
The collapse of Austin-based Guaranty Bank, whose parent company was Guaranty Financial Group Inc., was the 10th-largest bank failure in U.S. history. It is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund an estimated $3 billion.
The bank, with 162 branches in Texas and California, also suffered losses on mortgage-linked securities it bought from other banks.
Birmingham, Ala.-based BBVA Compass, with 600 branches from Florida to California, said the acquisition creates the 15th-largest commercial bank in the U.S., with about $49 billion in deposits. ''This compelling transaction makes excellent strategic sense and represents an exciting growth opportunity for BBVA Compass as we continue to build the leading banking franchise in the high-growth Sunbelt region,'' Jose Maria Garcia Meyer, chairman of BBVA Compass, said in a statement.
