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Penn Square Bank was a small commercial bank located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The bank made a large number of poorly underwritten energy-related loans that it sold to other banks. Losses on these loans led to significant financial problems in these banks. Penn Square Bank eventually declared bankruptcy in July 1982.
The bank was founded in 1960 and was located in the rear of the Penn Square Mall [1] in Oklahoma City. The bank made its name in high-risk energy loans during the late 1970s and early 1980s Oklahoma and Texas oil boom. Between 1974 and 1982, the bank's assets increased more than 15 times to $525 million and its deposits swelled from $29 million to more than $450 million. As a result primarily of irresponsible lending practices in connection with the sale of over $1 billion in "loan participations" to other banks throughout America, Penn Square Bank failed [2] in July 1982. Unlike most previous bank failures since the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was formed, the uninsured depositors suffered losses as no other bank was willing to assume the deposits. As most of the deposits came from other financial institutions and represented high interest-rate jumbo certificates of deposit that were largely uninsured, this represented a major loss for the depositors. The investigation by the FDIC after the bank failure uncovered 451 possible criminal violations. [3]
The bank is often cited as being partly responsible for the collapse of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company [4] of Chicago, which had to write off US$500+ million in loans purchased from Penn Square. In addition, there were major losses at other banks, including Seattle First National Bank, Michigan National Bank, and Chase Manhattan Bank in New York (Seattle First and Continental Illinois were eventually acquired by Bank of America predecessor BankAmerica; the former in 1983 and the latter in 1994). The bank's collapse coincided with the 1980s oil glut and Penn Square was the first of 139 Oklahoma banks that failed in the 1980s. The insolvency was the subject of two best-selling books and led to a two-year prison term for the bank's energy-lending chief, Bill Patterson. [5] [6]
Abilene National Bank in Abilene, Texas, did correspondent banking with Penn Square Bank. Abilene National Bank later became Mbank then Bank One then JPMorgan Chase bank.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is one of two agencies that provide deposit insurance to depositors in American depository institutions, the other being the National Credit Union Administration, which regulates and insures credit unions. The FDIC is a United States government corporation providing deposit insurance to depositors in American commercial banks and savings banks. The FDIC was created by the 1933 Banking Act, enacted during the Great Depression to restore trust in the American banking system. More than one-third of banks failed in the years before the FDIC's creation, and bank runs were common. The insurance limit was initially US$2,500 per ownership category, and this was increased several times over the years. Since the passage of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2011, the FDIC insures deposits in member banks up to US$250,000 per ownership category. FDIC insurance is backed by the full faith and credit of the government of the United States of America, and since its inception in 1933 no depositor has ever lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds.
Banking in the United States began in the late 1790s along with the country's founding and has developed into highly influential and complex system of banking and financial services. Anchored by New York City and Wall Street, it is centered on various financial services namely private banking, asset management, and deposit security.
A bank run occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may cease to function in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking system, numerous customers withdraw cash from deposit accounts with a financial institution at the same time because they believe that the financial institution is, or might become, insolvent; they keep the cash or transfer it into other assets, such as government bonds, precious metals or gemstones. When they transfer funds to another institution, it may be characterized as a capital flight. As a bank run progresses, it generates its own momentum: as more people withdraw cash, the likelihood of default increases, triggering further withdrawals. This can destabilize the bank to the point where it runs out of cash and thus faces sudden bankruptcy. To combat a bank run, a bank may limit how much cash each customer may withdraw, suspend withdrawals altogether, or promptly acquire more cash from other banks or from the central bank, besides other measures.
A savings and loan association (S&L), or thrift institution, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans. The terms "S&L" or "thrift" are mainly used in the United States; similar institutions in the United Kingdom, Ireland and some Commonwealth countries include building societies and trustee savings banks. They are often mutually held, meaning that the depositors and borrowers are members with voting rights, and have the ability to direct the financial and managerial goals of the organization like the members of a credit union or the policyholders of a mutual insurance company. While it is possible for an S&L to be a joint-stock company, and even publicly traded, in such instances it is no longer truly a mutual association, and depositors and borrowers no longer have membership rights and managerial control. By law, thrifts can have no more than 20 percent of their lending in commercial loans—their focus on mortgage and consumer loans makes them particularly vulnerable to housing downturns such as the deep one the U.S. experienced in 2007.
The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of 1,043 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations (S&Ls) in the United States from 1986 to 1995. An S&L or "thrift" is a financial institution that accepts savings deposits and makes mortgage, car and other personal loans to individual members.
A bailout is the provision of financial help to a corporation or country which otherwise would be on the brink of failure bankruptcy.
The Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was at one time the seventh-largest commercial bank in the United States as measured by deposits, with approximately $40 billion in assets. In 1984, Continental Illinois became the largest ever bank failure in U.S. history, when a run on the bank led to its seizure by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Continental Illinois retained this dubious distinction until the failure of Washington Mutual in 2008 during the financial crisis of 2008, which ended up being over seven times larger than the failure of Continental Illinois.
Seafirst Corporation was a bank holding company based in Seattle, Washington.
IndyMac, a contraction of Independent National Mortgage Corporation, was an American bank based in California that failed in 2008 and was seized by the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
"Too big to fail" (TBTF) is a theory in banking and finance that asserts that certain corporations, particularly financial institutions, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to the greater economic system, and that they therefore must be supported by governments when they face potential failure. The colloquial term "too big to fail" was popularized by U.S. Congressman Stewart McKinney in a 1984 Congressional hearing, discussing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's intervention with Continental Illinois. The term had previously been used occasionally in the press, and similar thinking had motivated earlier bank bailouts.
Southeast Banking Corporation was a bank holding company based in Miami, Florida. On Friday, September 19, 1991, during the savings and loan crisis, Southeast failed and was seized by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. It was placed into the receivership of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), who sold almost all of Southeast's assets to First Union. The bank failure is notable since it is the one of the first instances of the FDIC liquidating a bank using loss sharing provisions. As a result of several mergers over the next two decades, most of what was once Southeast is now part of Wells Fargo.
Corus Bankshares, Inc. operated as the holding company for Corus Bank, N.A., a United States company that offered consumer and corporate banking products and services.
John M. Reich was a Director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). He was sworn in on January 15, 2001, following an appointment by President of the United States Bill Clinton and served on the FDIC Board for eight years. Reich served as Vice Chairman of the Board of the FDIC from November 2002 until he was nominated on June 7, 2005 by President George W. Bush to be Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), and the U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination on July 29, 2005. He also served as Acting Chairman of the FDIC from July to August 2001. As Deputy Chairman, 2001–2005, Reich served as the Chair of FDIC's Audit Committee during a time when the General Accounting Office issued reportable conditions regarding information security at the Corporation.
A bank failure occurs when a bank is unable to meet its obligations to its depositors or other creditors because it has become insolvent or too illiquid to meet its liabilities. A bank usually fails economically when the market value of its assets declines to a value that is less than the market value of its liabilities. The insolvent bank either borrows from other solvent banks or sells its assets at a lower price than its market value to generate liquid money to pay its depositors on demand. The inability of the solvent banks to lend liquid money to the insolvent bank creates a bank panic among the depositors as more depositors try to take out cash deposits from the bank. As such, the bank is unable to fulfill the demands of all of its depositors on time. A bank may be taken over by the regulating government agency if its shareholders' equity are below the regulatory minimum.
The Superior Bank FSB was a Hinsdale, Illinois-based savings and loan association that collapsed in July 2001 with some $2.3b in assets. It was co-owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago.
Silver State Bank was a failed Nevada commercial bank with 17 branches in the Las Vegas and Phoenix metropolitan areas and loan operations across the western United States. The bank's assets were acquired by Zions Bancorporation, a bank holding corporation with $2 billion in assets.
First Midwest Bancorp, Inc is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, just east of O'Hare Airport. The company's predecessor traces back to Joliet, Illinois. From there the company has grown to serve many Chicago suburbs including northwest Indiana, downstate Illinois, southeast Wisconsin and the Quad Cities area including Iowa. First Midwest Bank is one of the largest banking institutions in the United States
The Rhode Island banking crisis took place in the early 1990s, when approximately a third of the US state of Rhode Island's population lost access to funds in their bank accounts. The events were triggered by the failure of a Providence bank, Heritage Loan & Investment, due to long-term embezzlement by its president. News of its problems led to a bank run in which customers tried to withdraw money from the bank which did not have enough money available. In normal circumstances, depositors would be protected by the bank's insurance, but the state's private insurer had a long history of problems and was unable to fulfill its commitments. When the insurer collapsed, Governor Bruce Sundlun announced the closure of 45 credit unions and banks just hours after his inauguration.
