West Chicago's DuPage National Bank has the dubious honor of being the first FDIC-insured institution to close in 2014.
[IMAGE] [COLUMN_BREAK]The ""agency"":http://www.fdic.gov/ announced Friday the bank's closure by the ""Office of the Comptroller of the Currency"":http://occ.treas.gov/ (OCC).
To protect depositors, FDIC announced a purchase and assumption agreement with ""Republic Bank of Chicago"":http://www.republicebank.com/, which has agreed to pay a premium of 1.20 percent to assume all of DuPage National's deposits (estimated at $59.6 million as of Q3 2013) and ""essentially all"" of its assets.
FDIC estimates the failed bank's acquisition will cost its Deposit Insurance Fund about $1.6 million.
The steady downward trend of bank failures in recent years suggests that, barring any major financial shocks to the country, 2014 will see a short list of collapses. In 2011, FDIC reported 92 bank failures; that number nearly halved to 51 in 2012, which in turn dropped to 24 last year.