Pisgah Community Bank in Asheville Seized

On Friday, May 10, the N.C. Office of the Commissioner of Banks seized Pisgah Community Bank in Asheville, North Carolina, and handed it over to the FDIC as receiver.  The FDIC immediately sold approximately $19.8 million of Pisgah’s $21.9 million in assets to Capital Bank, N.A., of Rockville, Maryland.  The Maryland bank also assumed most of the $21.2 million in total deposits. 

Today, Monday, May 13, the Asheville office opened as a branch of Capital Bank, which has its only other branches in Maryland and Washington, DC.

I have no inside information, but my guess is that Capital Bank does not intend to expand further into North Carolina, and that the acquired office in Asheville will ultimately be closed or sold.  I draw that inference from the existing geographic footprint of the Maryland bank and the fact that NC already has a fast-growing "Capital Bank" (and therefore a trademark/regulatory dispute would be foreseeable if both continued to grow in NC under the same name.)  Only time will tell if I have guessed correctly.

Pisgah Community Bank was the seventh North Carolina state-chartered bank to close since 1991, and the second in 2013.

[Source: NCCOB]