Guaranty Financial Group, the parent company of Guaranty Bank, continues to struggle to survive. Last month, Guaranty Financial said that it was unlikely that they could stay in business. Now the company is even less confident.
Considering that 77 banks have already failed, it wouldn’t be too shocking if Guaranty Financial became another victim of the global economic downturn combined with unsafe business decisions based on greed rather than sound judgment. Just last week, federal regulators shut down Colonial BancGroup — a bank with $25 billion in assets.
Guaranty Financial has more than 150 branches in California and Texas. While it is …read more

Heading into Friday, 69 banks had been shut down by United States federal regulators in 2009. On Friday, three more banks were added to the tally — raising the annual total to 72 failed banks.
Two of the banks that were shut down were located in the state of Florida, while Oregon was the home to the other bank. As usual, the receiver of the banks is the FDIC.
The two Florida banks were Community National Bank of Sarasoty County (based in Venice, Florida) and First State Bank (based in Sarasota, Florida). Both of these Florida banks saw their deposits get acquired …read more

When the federal government decided to siphon taxpayer money into banks across the country, it hoped that banks would pass the money along in the form of loans, thus alleviating the problem of tightfisted banks. However, the inspector in charge of overseeing the bailout money, Neil Barofsky, has revealed that many of the banks that received bailout money are using it for a variety of unrelated purposes.
According to a report that has yet to be published, 110 of the 360 banks that received bailout money used at least some of the funds for investments.
Among other misuses of the funds, 52 …read more

With the 53rd U.S. bank failure having happened just a couple of days ago, it is no secret that banks across the country are struggling with loans that cannot be repaid and investments that never pan out. Many banks across the country are trying to make up the difference by raising fees here and there to make up the difference.
 
You may have already noticed that ATM fees are up, especially those that banks charge you if you use try to withdraw money from a different bank than the one that owns the ATM machine. Overdraft fees have also gone up …read more

On Wednesday, the government tapped nine financial firms to run toxic asset programs. The firms were selected from a pool of over 100 applicants. They will have 12 weeks to raise $500 million each. The investments will be matched by the Treasury Department and further supplemented from debt financing. The financial firms chosen to take part in this scaled down program aimed at helping banks include:

BlackRock (BLK, Fortune 500)
AllianceBernstein (AB)
Oaktree Capital Management
Invesco (IVZ)
Angelo, Gordon & Co.
Marathon Asset Management
RLJ Western Asset Management
The TCW Group
Wellington Management Company

CNNMoney’s David Ellis says:
Under the program, the government will run auctions between the banks selling assets …read more

There will be four new faces at Bank of America’s board meetings: Federal Reserve Governor Susan Bies, former Compass Bancshares Inc. leader D. Paul Jones, former FDIC Chairman Donald Power, and retired  Bank One Corp. and Visa International Inc. executive William Boardman. These outside directors will bring their collective experience to the troubled financial giant.
The new additions follow the departure of Robert Tillmann, former Lowe’s Cos. Inc. chief executive, who resigned from the Bank of America board on May 29. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tillman’s resignation had nothing to do with any conflicts with Bank of America or …read more

According to a report by the U.S. Treasury Department, the banks that received billions of dollars of taxpayer money from the TARP fund have actually been less forthcoming with credit than before. The report shows that the total amount of all outstanding loans from the banks that received taxpayer money has fallen 0.8 percent in a month’s time.
 
This means that the total amount of money involved in lending contracts has shrunk from $5.28 trillion to $5.24 trillion from February to March in the 500 financial institutions that received taxpayer money. Commercial loans have fallen 1.2 percent $2.35 trillion in everywhere …read more

Five California banks have received orders from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to make a variety of changes. These orders come off the back of increasing public pressure for transparent business practices, especially in the wake of the economic crisis.
 
California has been hit especially hard by the softening economy and this development emphasizes the fact that the troubled state will have to make concessions. The orders from the FDIC include mandates for stricter lending policies, different management, and even new capital.
 
Of the 24 such orders issued across the country, California received about a fifth of them, but the effected banks …read more

With the economy struggling, many larger banks in the U.S. continue to absorb smaller, weaker banks to make up for the surplus in banks. According to Bank of America’s CEO, Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America will not be among the financial institutions that actively seek mergers.
This revelation from Lewis comes at a time when huge bank mergers have become commonplace, such as Wells Fargo’s acquisition of Wachovia last year and JPMorgan Chase’s acquisition of Washington Mutual. Although Bank of America recently acquired Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, the financial giant will not pursue a merger with another bank.
The recent financial …read more

The results of the bank stress tests were released on Thursday. It was revealed that 10 out of 19 tested need to raise a total of $74.6 billion in capital. Leading the list was Bank of America, which need to raise $33.9 billion. Next on the list was Wells Fargo ($13.7 billion) and GMAC ($11.5 billion), rounding out the top three.
Now that the results of the tests are public, the 10 banks have until June 8, 2009 to tell regulators in a detailed plan how they intend to raise the capital. At that point, they will have six months …read more