WASHINGTON(AP)
Regulators on Friday shut down Silver State Bank, saying the
Nevada bank failed because of losses on soured loans, mainly in
commercial real estate and land development.
It was the 11th failure this year of a federally insured
bank.
Nevada regulators closed Silver State and the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the bank, based in
Henderson, Nev. It had $2 billion in assets and $1.7 billion in
deposits as of June 30.
Andrew K. McCain, a son of Republican presidential nominee John
McCain, sat on the boards of Silver State Bank and of its parent,
Silver State Bancorp, since February but resigned in July after
five months citing "personal reasons," corporate filings
with the Securities and Exchange Commission show. Andrew McCain
also was a member of the bank's audit committee, responsible
for oversight of the company's accounting.
The younger McCain, who is the chief financial officer of
Hensley & Co., the beer distributorship of which Cindy McCain
is chairwoman, is the Arizona senator's adopted son from his
first marriage.
Andrew McCain's position on the Silver State board and
departure were first reported Friday by The Wall Street Journal
online.
Silver State Bank ran into difficulty because of a substantial
amount of "poor-quality loans primarily related to real estate
development" in southern Nevada and other distressed markets,
FDIC spokesman David Barr said.
"When the housing market slowed down, people who bought raw
land to build new homes didn't need that land so they
couldn't do anything with it and repay their loans. So those
loans went bad," Barr said.
Construction and development loans have been the fastest-growing
category of troubled loans for U.S. banks, and many banks have
heavy concentrations of them in their lending portfolios, according
to the FDIC. Some small banks are considered especially vulnerable.
Delinquent loan payments and defaults by commercial and residential
developers have surged to the highest levels since the early 1990s
_ the latter part of the savings and loan crisis.
The FDIC said Silver State Bank's insured deposits will be
assumed by Nevada State Bank of Las Vegas. Its branches will reopen
Monday as offices of Nevada State Bank in Nevada and National Bank
of Arizona in Arizona.
The agency said depositors of Silver State Bank will continue to
have full access to their deposits.
The 11 failures so far this year compare with three for all of
2007, and federal banking officials have said that more banks are
in danger of collapse.
Silver State Bank has operated 13 branches in Nevada and four in
Arizona as well as loan offices in Nevada, Utah, Colorado,
Washington, Oregon, California and Florida.
The FDIC estimated its resolution will cost the deposit
insurance fund between $450 million and $550 million.
Regular deposit accounts are insured up to $100,000.
There were about $20 million in uninsured deposits held in
roughly 500 accounts at Silver State that potentially exceeded the
insurance limit, the FDIC said.
Concern has been growing over the solvency of some banks amid
the housing slump and the steep slide in the mortgage market. The
pressures of tighter credit, tumbling home prices and rising
foreclosures have been battering many banks, large and small,
across the nation.
The largest bank failure by far this year has been that of
savings and loan IndyMac Bank, which was seized by regulators on
July 11 with about $32 billion in assets and deposits of $19
billion.
The seizure of Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac, which was the
largest regulated thrift to fail in the United States, prompted
hundreds of angry customers to line up for hours in Southern
California to demand their money. IndyMac also was the
second-largest financial institution to close in U.S. history,
after Continental Illinois National Bank in 1984.
The FDIC has been operating the bank, now called IndyMac Federal
Bank, under a conservatorship.
The FDIC plans to raise insurance premiums paid by banks and
thrifts to replenish its reserve fund after paying out billions of
dollars to depositors at IndyMac. The fund, currently at $45
billion, is expected to take a hit from IndyMac of $4 billion to $8
billion.
Federal officials expect turbulence in the banking industry to
continue well into next year, and more banks to appear on the
FDIC's internal list of troubled institutions.
Of the 8,500 or so FDIC-insured banks in the country, 117 were
considered to be in trouble in the second quarter _ the highest
level in about five years and up from 90 in the first quarter. The
agency doesn't disclose the banks' names.
Only 13 percent of banks that make the list fail, on average,
and most are nursed back to health or acquired by stronger
institutions, according to the FDIC.
Federally insured banks and thrifts set aside a record $50.2
billion to cover losses from soured mortgages and other loans in
the April-June quarter, when profits plunged 86 percent from a year
earlier.
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Silver State Bank customers with accounts exceeding $100,000 can
contact the FDIC at 1-800-523-8177 to set up an appointment to
discuss their deposits.
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Associated Press writer Brendan Riley in Carson City, Nev.,
contributed to this report.
(CORRECTS to 13 branches in Nevada instead 12, four in
Arizona.)
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