Arvest Bank Fails in Two Bids

We knew it, we just couldn’t prove it until now.

We found this on Kansas City Star’s business blog on April 24:

“The $10 billion Arkansas bank owned by Wal-Mart Stores’ founding family is knocking on the door of Kansas City’s banking market. Arvest Bank bid, albeit unsuccessfully, to take over the branches of recently failed TeamBank and American Sterling Bank.”

TeamBank NA of Paola, Kans. was closed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on March 20. It had 17 offices and year-end assets of $669.8 million. Great Southern Bank of Springfield, Mo., won the bid, with an 80/20 loss-share agreement with the FDIC on about $450 million of TeamBank’s assets.

That failure is estimated to cost the FDIC fund $98 million.

You may remember that GSB had a $35 million charge off last year related to the failure of ANB Financial of Bentonville. Small world.

American Sterling Bank of Sugar Creek, Mo. was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision on April 17. Metcalf Bank of Lee’s Summit, Mo., purchased about $173.6 million in assets and acquired branches in California and Arizona.

The FDIC said it will retain the remaining assets for later disposition.

We figured Arvest, with plenty of capital ($732 million in tier 1) and assets ($10.2 billion), would be interested in some strategic buys, but we know from past interviews with the brass, that the company isn’t interested in paying top dollar.

Thanks to Star staffers for saving us an FOI request, which we were in the process of filing.