Free Republic

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A jury on Tuesday convicted the majority owner of what had been one of the nation's largest mortgage companies on all 14 counts in a $3 billion fraud trial that officials have said is one of the most significant prosecutions to arise from the nation's financial crisis. Prosecutors said Lee Farkas led a fraud scheme of staggering proportions as chairman of Florida-based Taylor Bean & Whitaker. The fraud not only caused the company's 2009 collapse and the loss of jobs for its 2,000 workers, but also contributed to the collapse of Alabama-based Colonial Bank, the sixth-largest bank...

The bankruptcy of Colonial Bank (CNB) was the largest bank-bankruptcy in the U.S. since several large, U.S. financial institutions collapsed last year – with the most recent being Washington Mutual, last fall. However, there is one huge difference between the mega-bankruptcies of last year and the collapse of Colonial Bank a week ago. During the large bank-failures of 2008, the acquiring institutions wrote-down the “assets” on the books of these banks by an average of 18% - according to a Bloomberg article. However, when BB&T Corp purchased Colonial, it immediately wrote-down Colonial's assets by 37%, double the amount of discounting...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Shares of BB&T Corp. rallied Friday on reports it will buy deposits and branches of Colonial BancGroup Inc. in a deal backed by federal regulators to take the struggling lender into receivership. The deal was approved by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Thursday night and is expected to be announced later on Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "The market is treating it as it was a foregone conclusion here," said Sandler O'Neill & Partners analyst Kevin Fitzsimmons. Shares of BB&T rose $2.26, or 8.8 percent, to $28.06 in afternoon trading Friday, while shares of Colonial...

The Alabama State Banking Board is expected next week to ask Colonial BancGroup to agree to appoint the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as receiver or conservator for Colonial Bank. Colonial said in a release and in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday morning that it received notice Wednesday from the Alabama board that it would ask for Colonial’s consent in the matter, if and when the state superintendent of banking deems such an appointment to be necessary, at a meeting on Aug. 12.

Posted: 11:44 am EDT August 3, 2009 Updated: 11:56 am EDT August 3, 2009 ORLANDO, Fla. -- Eyewitness News learned that federal agents are raiding a Colonial Bank building on Pine Street late Monday morning. The agents are taking out boxes of documents from the building in downtown Orlando. WFTV.com will update the story as it develops