U.S. Bancorp Gets $18 Bln Seized Bank Assets
U.S. Bancorp on Friday acquired nine banks held by FBOP Corp, picking up $18.4 billion in assets after regulators seized a major Los Angeles lender and eight other banks in the latest failures to emerge from the financial crisis.
Among the banks Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp acquired was Los Angeles-based California National Bank, taken over by regulators on Friday in what the Los Angeles Times called the fourth-largest U.S. bank failure this year.
Bank failures in 2009 hit 106 last week, their highest annual level since 1992, with more expected to come. The largest institution to fail in the current financial crisis was Washington Mutual, which boasted $307 billion in assets when it was shuttered in September 2008.
Visibly worried employees lined up to file into Cal National’s head offices in the heart of a deserted downtown Los Angeles on a chilly Friday evening, where they had their employers’ fate explained to them, regulators said.
“We’re getting ready to turn everything over to U.S. Bank,” said Roberta Valdez, a spokeswoman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, which helped supervise the transfer of FBOP’s assets. “They will continue to operate as normal in the interim,” she added, referring to lenders acquired from FBOP.
U.S. Bancorp — which has been buying up distressed assets this year — is picking up eight other lenders once owned by FBOP, a private Illinois group with over $18 billion in assets that owns banks in Texas, Illinois, Arizona and California.
Cal National is FBOP’s largest bank by branches. Others that will now go under the U.S. Bancorp umbrella included BankUSA, Citizens National Bank, Madisonville State Bank, North Houston Bank, Pacific National Bank, Park National Bank, San Diego National Bank, and the Community Bank of Lemont.
“This transaction is consistent with the growth strategy that we have outlined many times in the past, which includes enhancing our existing franchise through low-risk, in-market acquisitions,” said Rick Hartnack, vice chairman of consumer banking for U.S. Bancorp.
