Texas Based Guaranty Bank To Be Seized Today

Last week it was Colonial Bank, the sixth largest bank failure in US history. Today it will be Texas based Guaranty Bank with over $17 billion in assets. The FDIC is broke and will need to tap the $100 billion taxpayer credit line very soon. Let's see how many more bank join Guaranty on this Bank Failure Friday.-Lou


Guaranty Bank (based in Austin) is expected to be seized by the FDIC this week.This savings institution has over $13 billion in assets.

This is the second largest bank failure for Texas, (just behind the July 1988 failure of First Republic at $17 billion in assets).

Based on multiple reports, the Spanish Bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya has won the bidding for Guaranty.

Guaranty has over 150 locations in Texas and California with 8 branches in Bexar County.
The failure of Guaranty Bank can be attributed largely to the downturn in the housing market, mortgage-backed securities business and the homebuilder construction loans in California.

The state of Texas has a foreclosure rate of 4.68% (much better than some of our neighboring sunshine states). The highest foreclosure states are Florida at 17.2% and Nevada at 15.6% , Arizona at 11.05% and California at 10.81% . Source: Mortgage Bankers Association based on second-quarter 2009.