Warning to bankers - Clean up your balance sheets or bank examiners will clean them up for you [View All]

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http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/10/Business/It_s_time_to_really_g.shtml

It's time to really give banks a closer look

Four months ago this column appeared with the headline: It's time to give banks a closer look.

By Robert Trigaux, Times Business Editor
Published February 10, 2008

Four months ago this column appeared with the headline: It's time to give banks a closer look.

Well, put away the binoculars and grab the microscope. Bank woes are on the rise. Let's magnify and inspect what has been largely out of sight to the public.

Less than two weeks ago, John C. Dugan, one of the nation's top bank regulators, issued a warning in person to the Florida Bankers Association. Way too many banks made too many commercial real estate loans - Dugan did not mean mortgages to home buyers, but he did mean construction loans to homebuilders - and that concentration of lending is starting to show some cracks.

Nonperforming loans in Florida that a year ago were below the U.S. average have spiked to 3.34 percent, noted Dugan, who runs the U.S. Treasury Department unit known as the Comptroller of the Currency. "That's 70 percent higher than the national average and an almost eight-fold increase in one year."

When regulators say eight-fold about bad lending, pay attention.

Clean up your balance sheets or bank examiners will clean them up for you, Dugan said. "And yes," he added, "there will be an increase in bank failures."