US bank failures reach 45

WASHINGTON (AP) – Regulators last week shut down a small bank in South Carolina, the 45th US bank failure this year in the wake of economic distress and piles of bad loans. By this time last year, regulators had closed 81 banks. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Atlantic Bank and Trust, based in Charleston, South Carolina, with $208.2 million in assets and $191.6 million in deposits. First Citizens Bank and Trust Co., based in Columbia, South Carolina, agreed to assume the assets and deposits of the failed bank. In 2010 regulators seized 157 banks, the most in a year since the savings-and-loan crisis two decades ago. The FDIC has said that 2010 likely would mark the peak for bank failures. There were 140 bank failures in 2009, costing the insurance fund about $36 billion. The failures last year cost around $21 billion, a lower price tag because the banks that failed in 2010 were smaller on average. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three were closed in 2007.