Southshore Community Bank of Florida Becomes 56th Banking Failure

Southshore Community Bank of Apollo Beach, Florida, was closed today by Florida regulators who appointed the FDIC as receiver.  The FDIC sold the failed bank to American Momentum Bank of Tampa, Florida.

Southshore had only two branches.  All depositors of Southshore will automatically become depositors of American Momentum Bank.  Depositors of failed Southshore can continue to access their money over the weekend through the use of debit cards, checks or ATMs.

Southshore Community Bank’s first office was opened in September 2005 and according to the Bank’s website, they expected to rapidly grow in the once booming Florida property markets.  The collapse of real estate markets resulted in a large amount of defaulted loans and the eventual failure of the Bank.

At March 31, 2011, Southshore had total assets of $46.3 million and total deposits of $45.3 million.  American Momentum Bank will assume all deposits and purchase all assets of Southshore.

After Georgia, Florida has the second highest number of banking failures in the nation.  The two banking failures in Florida today bring the total number of failures in the State to 9.

Southshore Bank was taken over by privately owned American Momentum Bank of Tampa, Florida, which was established in October 2006.  American Momentum Bank was founded in 2006 with $100 million in private capital, the largest amount of start up capital in the history of Florida banking.

American Momentum Bank was founded by wealthy Texas businessman Don Adam who ran privately held First American Bank of Texas before selling it to Citigroup for $750 million in 2005.  Don Adam’s timing of the sale of First American Bank was very well timed, coming shortly before the financial crisis that collapsed the value of virtually every bank in America.  Equally well timed was Mr. Adam’s re-entry into banking to buy failed banks at bargain prices from the FDIC.

American Momentum also acquired LandMark Bank of Sarasota, Florida, which was also closed today by regulators.

The failure of Southshore Community will cost the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund $8.3 million.  Southshore is the nation’s 56th banking failure and the eight in Florida.