The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a United States government corporation supplying deposit insurance to depositors in American commercial banks and savings banks. The FDIC was created by the Banking Act of 1933, 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 has been increased several times over the years. Since the enactment of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, the FDIC insures deposits in member banks up to $250,000 per ownership category. FDIC insurance is backed by the full faith and credit of the government of the United States, and according to the FDIC, "since its start in 1933 no depositor has ever lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds".
In the United States, banking had begun by the 1780s, along with the country's founding. It has developed into a 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, such as private banking, asset management, and deposit security.
Washington Mutual, Inc. was an American savings bank holding company based in Seattle. It was the parent company of WaMu Bank, which was the largest savings and loan association in the United States until its collapse in 2008.
The Philadelphia Savings Fund Society (PSFS), originally called the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, was a savings bank headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. PSFS was founded in December 1816, the first savings bank to organize and do business in the United States. The bank would develop as one of the largest savings banks in the United States and became a Philadelphia institution. Generations of Philadelphians first opened accounts as children and became lifelong depositors.
M&T Bank Corporation is an American bank holding company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. It operates 1,000+ branches in 12 states across the Eastern United States, from Maine to Northern Virginia. Until May 1998, the bank's holding company was named First Empire State Corporation.
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.
Great Western Bank was a large retail bank that operated primarily in the Western United States. Great Western's headquarters were in Chatsworth, California. At one time, Great Western was one of the largest savings and loan in the United States, second only to Home Savings of America. The bank was acquired by Washington Mutual in 1997 for $6.8 billion.
In finance, senior debt is debt that takes priority over other unsecured or otherwise more "junior" debt owed by an issuer. Senior debt is frequently issued in the form of senior notes or referred to as senior loans. Senior debt has greater seniority in the issuer's capital structure than subordinated debt. In the event the issuer goes bankrupt, senior debt theoretically must be repaid before other creditors receive any payment.
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 therefore should be supported by government 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 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.
First Republic Bank was a commercial bank and provider of wealth management services headquartered in San Francisco, California. It catered to high-net-worth individuals and operated 93 offices in 11 states, primarily in New York, California, Massachusetts, and Florida. On May 1, 2023, as part of the 2023 United States banking crisis, the FDIC announced that First Republic had been closed and sold to JPMorgan Chase.
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 Greenwich Savings Bank was an American savings bank based in New York City that operated from 1833 to 1981. At the time of its closure in 1981, it was the 16th largest bank in the U.S. by total deposits.
The government interventions during the subprime mortgage crisis were a response to the 2007–2009 subprime mortgage crisis and resulted in a variety of government bailouts that were implemented to stabilize the financial system during late 2007 and early 2008.
Benj. Franklin Savings and Loan was a thrift based in Portland, in the U.S. state of Oregon. Founded in 1925, the company was seized by the United States Government in 1990. In 1996 the United States Supreme Court found that this and similar seizures were based on an unconstitutional provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA). Shareholders of the thrift sued the federal government for damages caused by the seizure, with the shareholders winning several rounds in the courts. In 2013, $9.5 million was allocated for disbursement to shareholders.
The Bank of Washington, later named The National Bank of Washington and abbreviated as NBW, was the first bank established in Washington, D.C. After suffering from bank failure in 1990, the bank was acquired by Riggs Bank.
Franklin Savings Association was an Ottawa, Kansas-based American Savings and loan association that was one of the largest seizures of the savings and loan crisis. Subsequent litigation established that the institution had always been in full capital compliance, a fact to which the FDIC stipulated in 2011, after 21 years of legal challenges by Franklin's shareholders. Also, the FDIC refused to open its books to a bankruptcy judge and never demonstrated that the seizure resulted in a loss to the American taxpayers. It is widely believed that Franklin's assets, which had a book value of more than $380 million when seized, were ultimately sold by the government to private investors at a significant profit.
Freedom National Bank was an African-American owned bank in Harlem founded in 1964 and shut down in 1990. Freedom National served Harlem's Black community and was one of the largest Black owned banks in the U.S. Its main office was at 275 West 125th Street.
