Six more US banks forced to shut down

Regulators shut six banks holding US$1.23 billion ($1.67 billion) in assets, including three in Georgia and one each in Arkansas, Minnesota and Florida, as real-estate losses drive this year's bank failures to 157.

Florida has lost 29 lenders this year while 21 banks in Georgia were seized, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said. Regulators have closed 322 banks since the start of 2008.

The six closures cost the FDIC's deposit-insurance fund a total of US$267.6 million.

"We're over the hump in terms of number of failures and the average size, and potentially in the cost of them," Bert Ely, a banking consultant in Virginia, said.

The crisis is "far from over but we're making headway".

These failures may be the final closures for 2010 because regulators seldom shut down banks on holiday weekends, Ely said.

More than 500 banks may fail before the cycle that started in 2007 comes to a close, "given the severity of the problems and the prolonged nature of the recovery", Ely said.

The FDIC said last month that its list of "problem" banks - those at heightened risk of failure - rose 3.7 per cent to 860 in the third quarter, the most in 17 years. Banks on the confidential list had US$379.2 billion in assets as of September 30, down from US$403 billion at the end of the second quarter.

- Bloomberg