US regulators shut down three small banks in Indiana, South Carolina and Virginia on Friday, bringing total bank closures this year to 61. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said the largest of the failed institutions was Integra Bank NA, of Evansville, Indiana, with 52 branches, $2.2 billion in assets and $1.9 billion in deposits. These will be taken over by Old National Bancorp, also based in Evansville.
The FDIC also closed BankMeridian NA in Columbia, South Carolina, and Virginia Business Bank in Richmond, Virginia. This year's bank failures illustrate the problems facing small community banks, many of which are hard hit by the sluggish economy and their exposure to the troubled commercial real estate market.
Most of the banks that have failed so far this year have had less than $1 billion in assets. The FDIC said Xenith Bank of Richmond agreed to take over Virginia Business Bank's $85 million in deposits and purchase all of its assets, which total about $95.8 million.
In South Carolina, the FDIC said the three BankMeridian branches would reopen as branches of SCBT NA. Orangeburg, South Carolina-based SCBT would take over $215.5 million in BankMeridian deposits and purchase its assets of $239.8 million.
The three closures were expected to cost the FDIC's deposit insurance fund a combined $253.4 million. Bank failures are down so far this year and the FDIC expects the year-end tally to be below last year's total. In 2010, 157 banks failed, following 140 failures in 2009.
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