from WSJ:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. put out its quarterly profile of the banking industry on Wednesday.
Among its highlights:
- The number of “problem” banks rose from 252 at the end of the fourth quarter to 305 at the end of the first quarter.
- The 21 bank failures in the first quarter is the most since the fourth quarter of 1992 (15 have already failed in the second quarter).
- The average size of problem banks grew as well, up from an average of $631 million in assets to $721 million in assets per bank.
- The deposit insurance fund fell from $19 billion to $13 billion in the quarter, and it is expected to continue falling through 2009. The fund backstops roughly $4.8 trillion in deposits.
- Higher trading revenue at large banks pushed the industry to an aggregate profit of $7.6 billion in the first quarter.
- Banks charged off $37.8 billion in the first quarter, slightly less than the $38.5 billion charged off in the fourth quarter.
- Noncurrent loans and leases grew by $59.2 billion (or 25.5%), and the percent of loans that were bad rose from 2.95% to 3.76% during the quarter.
- FDIC officials said they did not believe losses to commercial real estate and construction and development loans had peaked yet.
