Colonial Bank

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Colonial Bank, incorporated as Colonial BancGroup (NYSE: CNB) was a Montgomery-based regional bank with 300 branches in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Nevada and Texas.

The bank was founded as the City National Bank of Birmingham in 1965 and was taken over in 1981 by Bobby Lowder, who renamed it. It acquired the Exchange National Bank of Birmingham in 1982. In its prime, Colonial was one of the nation's largest backers of mortgage originators. It constructed a new Birmingham headquarters, the Colonial Bank Building, on the site of the former Shades Valley High School, in 2001.

The bank failed in 2009, going into the receivership of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on August 14. The bank was the largest to fail in 2009, during the Great Recession. Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based BB&T acquired $22 billion of Colonial's $25 billion in assets, including all of its branches, with the remainder liquidated by the FDIC.

Its exposure to more than $1.9 million in delinquent loans, primarily in the Florida market, triggered its failure. A planned injection of capital from its primary lendee, Taylor Bean & Whitaker, which would have given the Florida-based lender 75% ownership of Colonial, fell through following a federal fraud investigation. Taylor Bean was blocked from making FHA-backed loans, resulting in a shutdown of the company. Later that week a federal judge ordered the freezing of $1 billion of Colonial's assets pending the outcome of a lawsuit brought by Bank of America.

Chairman & CEO Lowder retired in May 2009, immediately prior to the planned deal. Lewis Beville took over as CEO and Simuel Sippial Jr became chairman of the board.

Birmingham locations

Colonial had 26 offices in the metropolitan Birmingham area:

References

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