2010 is setting a pace for bank failures not seen since the 1930s: 118 so far. Against the series of gloomy press releases from the FDIC announcing bank failures is set one piece of good news: the first bank opening of 2010. It's of an institution called Lakeside Bank, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. As the New York Times reports, Lakeside Bank is the first proposed bank to win the FDIC's approval this year. (It's technically possible to open a bank without FDIC approval, if you can find someone else to issue deposit insurance, but no one's done it since 1933.) Its organizers, led by a local real estate developer, started the process to form the bank in 2007, and raised $13 million in initial capital. Progress stalled when the FDIC disapproved the organizers' first choice for president, and they went in search of another, eventually finding Hartie Spence, age 70, the retired president of Hancock Bank of Louisiana, an institution in Baton Rouge.
The Times author wonders why Lakeside's organizers, in the article's words, "won the lottery" to get the only bank charter issued in 2010. A look at its board of directors might explain this little mystery: buried within the down-home folksiness with which the bank described its directors are little nuggets such as these: two members have business degrees and two have law degrees. One is a professor of banking and another has a degree from the Banking School of the South. Two have taught in the banking program at Louisiana State University. One is a state senator and former mayor of Lake Charles; she also holds an undergraduate business degree. And one, modestly titled as "Mr. Willie Staats," is Dr. William F. Staats, described as having been named by the FDIC itself to the board of the nation's first bridge bank. He also used to be the vice president and corporate secretary of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. (I surmise that his presence is what tipped the FDIC into approving this bank.)
As for its office, the bank splurged: it does run out of a mobile home parked in front of the local Baptist church, but it's a double-wide.
Good luck, Lakeside, and keep a sharp eye on your collateral.