First NBC fails in costliest collapse since 2010

WASHINGTON — State regulators shuttered First NBC Bank in New Orleans in what is expected to be the costliest failure since the tail end of the financial crisis.

The collapse of the $3.6 billion-asset First NBC, whose founding CEO resigned on April 6, is expected to cost the Deposit Insurance Fund nearly $1 billion, according to federal regulators. That would make it the costliest failure since the fall of R-G Premier Bank of Puerto Rico in Hato Rey in 2010.

First NBC's transactional deposit accounts, everything except certain certificates of deposits, individual retirement accounts and brokered deposits, were bought by Whitney Bank, a unit of Hancock Holding in Gulfport, Miss. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said no depositor is expected to lose money as a result of the failure.

The $27.1 billion-asset Hancock had recently closed on the purchase of nine First NBC branches, along with $1.3 billion in loans and $511 million in deposits. As part of that deal, Hancock took on about $605 million in Federal Home Loan bank borrowings.

Hancock obtained another $1.6 billion in deposits and $1 billion in assets, including $200,000 in loans, from the failure. It also has the option to buy, or assume the leases for, 24 branches in Louisiana and five in Florida.

The FDIC-assisted acquisition should be accretive to Hancock's earnings by 3% to 5% next year, the company said in a regulatory filing. The deal included a $35 million transaction premium; loans were acquired at par. There was a 3% fair-value discount on the loans.

Hancock said it expects to incur about $13 million in merger-related changes, though it will also cut about 90% of costs associated with the operations it bought.

Though expensive, First NBC's failure is not exactly a surprise. The bank ran into regulatory trouble last year, when it disclosed that it was considered a troubled institution due to issues tied to its tax credit business. It was forced to restate several years worth of earnings in 2016, reducing its capital by nearly $100 million.

It entered into a consent order with regulators in November which required it to review its management, loans and problem-loan identification processes among other things.

The bank's founding CEO, Ashton Ryan, was removed in December and stepped down in April as president. The bank said Carl Chaney, a former Hancock CEO, would succeed Ryan as president, but he had little time to act. The bank was shut down three weeks later.

The FDIC estimated that the failure will cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $996.9 million.

First NBC is the fourth bank to fail this year, and the first in Louisiana since the fall of Central Progressive Bank in 2011.