Tenth bank failure this year

In keeping with the trend of shutting down banks late on Friday afternoon, the tenth shutdown of the year occurred on Friday. Integrity Bank of Alpharetta was closed by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance. Why Fridays? It gives officials a couple of days to assess things and prepare for dealing with consumers.

$974 million in deposits at Integrity will be taken over by Regions Bank of Birmingham. The FDIC is reporting that it will end up paying out an estimated $250 million to $350 million for insured deposits.

Why another bank failure? It's said that this one can be blamed on the real estate market. Integrity specialized in real estate lending and grew quickly, but as soon as the real estate market got sketchy the problems started. Late last year there was a management shakeup and the bank was delisted from the Nasdaq market early in 2008.