FDIC says Republic First Bank is closed by Pennsylvania regulators | CNN Business

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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. US banking watchdogs will next week propose requiring that banks with as little as $100 billion in assets issue enough long-term debt to cover capital losses if they ever failed.

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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Friday said that Republic Bank has been closed by Pennsylvania state regulators, in what the FDIC said was the first US bank failure this year.

“Philadelphia-based Republic First Bank (doing business as Republic Bank) was closed today by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect depositors, the FDIC entered into an agreement with Fulton Bank, National Association of Lancaster, Pennsylvania to assume substantially all of the deposits and purchase substantially all of the assets of Republic Bank,” the FDIC said in a statement.

The bank had about $6 billion in total assets and $4 billion in total deposits at the end of January, the FDIC said in its release.

That makes Republic Bank (FRBK) far smaller than the regional bank failures that rocked the financial world last year. Silicon Valley Bank, for example, had about $209 billion at the end of 2022; it collapsed in March 2023.

The FDIC said the former bank’s “32 branches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York will reopen as branches of Fulton Bank on Saturday (for branches with normal Saturday hours) or on Monday during normal business hours.”

Bloomberg News reported earlier in the week that the FDIC had approached buyers for the regional lender.

The FDIC said that Republic Bank was the first bank to fail in the United States since Citizens Bank in Sac City, Iowa, in November 2023.

This is a developing story and will be updated.