Georgia’s Omni National Fails; 21st Bank Failure This Year

This pace of bank failures early this year makes one thing clear: there are going to be plenty more failures to come as this year rolls onward. Omni National Bank of Atlanta was seized by federal regulators late Friday, the 21st U.S. bank to fail this year, amid rising foreclosures and an unemployment rate that appears headed into double digits. Omni National held $956 million in assets and $796.8 million in deposits; the bank was shut by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. named receiver, the OCC said in a statement. SunTrust Banks Inc. of Atlanta will operate the lender’s six branches in four states temporarily and wind down the bank by April 27, the FDIC said. After that date, all of the Omni branches will be closed; customers in Georgia and Florida that remain with the bank will automatically become SunTrust customers. Omni National depositors in Illinois and Texas will have checks mailed to them if they do not withdraw funds before the deadline, the FDIC said. It’s clearly a different “resolution” than most bank failures seen by the FDIC so far, which have seen the failing bank’s deposits acquired by another institution. The FDIC said it expects a $290 million hit to its Deposit Insurance Fund from the failure. “The OCC acted after finding that the bank had experienced substantial dissipation of assets and earnings due to unsafe and unsound practices,” the bank regulator said in a press statement. “The OCC also found that the bank has incurred losses that have depleted most of its capital, and there is no reasonable prospect that the bank will become adequately capitalized without Federal assistance.” Read the FDIC’s statement on the bank failure. Write to Paul Jackson at [email protected].