Regulators shut 6 Ga. banks, 1 in N.Y.

WASHINGTON - Regulators have shut six banks in Georgia and a small bank in New York state, boosting to 64 the number of federally insured banks to fail this year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the banks: six subsidiaries of Security Bank Corp., based in Macon, Ga., and Waterford Village Bank of Clarence, N.Y.

The announcements were made yesterday evening.

The six Security banks had total assets of $2.8 billion and deposits of $2.4 billion as of March 31. State Bank & Trust Co., based in Pinehurst, Ga., has agreed to assume all of the deposits and $2.4 billion of the assets, the FDIC said yesterday.

More Georgia banks have failed since the beginning of 2008 than in any other state. Most of the failures have involved banks in the Atlanta area, where the collapse of the real estate market brought economic dislocation.

Evans Bank, based in Angola, N.Y., will assume all of the assets and deposits of Waterford Village Bank.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund for the Georgia bank closures will be $807 million. It estimates that the cost for the New York bank closure to the fund will be $5.6 million.

The 64 bank failures nationwide this year compare with 25 last year and three in 2007.

As the economy has soured - with unemployment rising, home prices tumbling, and loan defaults soaring - bank failures have cascaded and sapped billions out of the deposit insurance fund. It now stands at its lowest level since 1993.