SPAN
January 1927-July 2010

HEADQUARTERS
Clewiston

REGULATORS
OTS

TOTAL ASSETS AT FAILURE
$168 million

COST TO FDIC
$31 million

DIRECTORS
John C. Perry
Raymond Clark Tullos
Christopher H. Shupe
John R. Ahern
Larry Coleman
Kay Coleman-Hazelett
Andrew J. Higginbotham
David A. Lyons
Melanie A. McGahee

Olde Cypress Community Bank was based in the heart of sugar cane country and survived for 83 years.

It was undone when it ignored its rural beginnings and branched out — in the fashion of so many other Florida banks — and began making real estate loans along Florida's coasts.

The FDIC found that it failed because it made aggressive loans outside the Clewiston area — and into places "that suffered from some of the highest real estate depreciation rates in the country."

By the end of 2008, the bank had more than $13 million in bad loans on its books. That sum grew to more than $20 million when regulators shuttered the bank in July 2010.

Olde Cypress was not regulated by the state and detailed regulatory reports are not available to the public.

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