by Calculated Risk on 3/02/2013 04:11:00 PM

Here is the unofficial problem bank list for Mar 1, 2013.

Changes and comments from surferdude808:

There was only one removal this week to the Unofficial Problem Bank List. After removal, the list holds 808 institutions with assets of $298.1 billion. From last week, assets fell by $4.7 billion with $4.0 billion of the decline in assets during the fourth quarter. A year ago, the list held 959 institutions with assets of $385.4 billion. According to an SEC filing, the FDIC terminated the action against Bank of Granite, Charlotte, NC ($717 million Ticker: FNBN).

This week the FDIC issued industry results for the fourth quarter including an update on the Official Problem Bank List. While the FDIC does not disclose institutions on the official list, they provided an institution count of 651 with assets of $233 billion. During the quarter, the official list declined by 43 institutions and assets dropped $29 billion. Since the last FDIC release, the unofficial list declined by 66 institutions and assets dropped $36.9 billion. After the FDIC released problem bank figures for the second quarter of 2010, the unofficial list has been higher since while it was lower at the time of prior quarterly releases. The upside tracking difference peaked at 185 institutions and assets of $72.6 billion when second quarter of 2012 figures were released. With the current release, the differences have been reduced to 157 institutions and assets of $65.0 billion.

Because the FDIC does not publish the official list, a proxy or unofficial list can be developed by reviewing press releases and published formal enforcement actions issued by the three federal banking regulators, reviewing SEC filings, or through media reports and company announcements describing that the bank is under a formal enforcement action. For the most part, the official problem bank list is comprised of banks with a safety & soundness CAMELS composite rating of 4 or 5 (the banking regulators use the FFIEC rating system known as CAMELS, which stands for the components that receive a rating including Capital adequacy, Asset quality, Management quality, Earnings strength, Liquidity strength, and Sensitivity to market risk. A composite rating is assigned from the components, but it does not result from a simple average of the components. The composite and component rating scale is from 1 to 5, with 1 being the strongest). Customarily, a banking regulator will only issue a safety & soundness formal enforcement when a bank has a composite CAMELS rating of 4 or 5, which reflects an unsafe & unsound financial condition that if not corrected could result in failure. There is high positive correlation between banks with a safety & soundness composite rating of 4 or worse and those listed on the official list. For example, many safety & soundness enforcement actions state in their preamble that an unsafe & sound condition exists, which is the reason for action issuance.

Since 1991, the banking regulators have statutorily been required to publish formal enforcement actions. For many reasons, the banking regulators have a general discomfort publishing any information on open banks especially formal enforcement actions, so not much energy is expended on their part ensuring the completeness of information in the public domain or making its retrieval simple. Given the difficulty for easy retrieval of all banks operating under a safety & soundness formal enforcement action, the unofficial list fills this void as a matter of public interest.

All of the banks on the unofficial list have received a safety & soundness formal enforcement action by a federal banking regulator or there is other information in the public domain such as an SEC filing, media release, or company statement that describe the bank being issued such an action. No confidential or non-public information supports any bank listed and a hypertext link to the public information is provided in the spreadsheet listing. The publishers make every effort to ensure the accuracy of the unofficial list and welcome all feedback and any credible information to support removal of any bank listed erroneously.

Earlier:
• Summary for Week Ending March 1st
• Schedule for Week of March 3rd