Federal regulators ended a three-week hiatus on takeovers by shuttering a small New Jersey thrift on Friday.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency closed the $51.9 million-asset Fort Lee Federal Savings Bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. entered into a purchase agreement with Alma Bank in Astoria, N.Y., for $15.7 million of the failed thrift's assets. The FDIC said in a press release that it would retain the remaining assets for further disposition.
The $745 million-asset Alma also agreed to pay the FDIC a 1.85% premium to assume Fort Lee Federal's $50.7 million in deposits.
The failure is expected to cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $14 million. It was the 17th bank to fail this year and the first to fail since regulators closed Fidelity Bank of Dearborn, Mich., on March 30.
