FDIC eases rules for private buys of failed banks

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators have eased restrictions for private investors seeking to buy failed banks, as the tally of collapsed institutions mounts and well-funded buyers are scarce.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s board voted 4-1 in a public meeting Wednesday to revise the rules it proposed last month in a way that lessens the amount of cash that private equity funds must maintain in the banks they acquire.

The minimum capital requirement was reduced to 10% of the bank's assets from 15%. The required capital must be maintained in the bank for at least three years, a mandate unchanged from the earlier proposal.

Private equity funds — which tend to buy distressed companies, cut costs and then resell them — have been criticized for their risk-taking and outsized pay for managers. But the depth of the banking crisis appears to have tempered the FDIC's resistance to private investors buying failed banks. That's partly because fewer healthy banks are willing to acquire other, ailing institutions with the financial crisis and recession causing banks to fail at the fastest pace since the height of the savings-and-loan crisis in 1992.

Eighty-one banks have failed so far this year. The closings have drained billions from the FDIC deposit insurance fund, which insures regular bank accounts up to $250,000 and is financed with fees paid by U.S. banks.

"The FDIC recognizes the need for new capital in the banking system," the agency's chairman, Sheila Bair, said before the vote.

The compromise struck among the FDIC directors — two of whom opposed the policy as proposed in early July — "is a good and balanced one," Bair said.

Banks need to be operated "profitably but prudently," she said.

One of the two original opponents, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, said the rules as originally written would have been "very costly" to the deposit insurance fund and the new ones "are a significant improvement."