Friday, May 22, 2009

Big Florida bank goes under

Story here. (I used to work for the founder.)

The failure will cost the FDIC insurance fund an estimated $4.9 billion -- which is the second-biggest hit to the fund during the current downturn, eclipsed only by the $11 billion cost incurred with the failure of IndyMac, of Pasadena, Calif. . . .

Camner's wife, Anne Camner, stood in the wings, fretting that the bank's collapse had been an emotional jolt to her family. ''We devoted 25 years to building this company,'' she said in an interview. "This was our baby.''

Anne Camner said her family was left in the dark. ''I found out yesterday at 5:15 p.m. that the bank had been seized,'' she said.

Camner, who resigned last October as chairman and CEO shortly after federal regulators slapped the bank with a cease-and-desist order, filed suit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court to force the company to hold a shareholder meeting. . . .

From a related Q&A:

"The bank was making option-ARM loans. It was making those mortgages and also selling those mortgages in the secondary market. And we all know with the downturn in the housing market, a lot of those loans went bad. Enough went bad to where the bank had to be closed by the OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision] today [Thursday] and the FDIC has to step into protect the depositors.''

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