New York Regulators Close The Park Avenue Bank

New York regulators on Friday closed The Park Avenue Bank, bringing to 28 the total number of financial institutions that have failed in the U.S. this year.

The Park Avenue Bank had total assets of $520.1 million and total deposits of $494.5 million as of the end of 2009, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said.

The FDIC has arranged to sell all of the bank's deposits and almost all of its assets to Valley National Bank, based in Wayne, N.J. Valley National Bank has agreed to pay a premium of 0.15% to assume the deposits.

The FDIC has agreed to share in losses on a $379.8 million pool of assets sold to Valley National Bank.

The Park Avenue Bank's four branches will reopen Monday as branches of Valley National Bank.

The Park Avenue Bank, headquartered just blocks from Manhattan's ritzy Fifth Avenue shopping strip, is the second to fail in New York this year.

State regulators closed LibertyPointe Bank Thursday. That bank had total assets of $209.7 million and total deposits of $209.5 million as of December's end, the FDIC said.

The FDIC expects the two failures to cost its deposit insurance fund a combined $75.5 million.

-By Meena Thiruvengadam, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6629; [e-mail]