SPAN
December 2001-July 2012

HEADQUARTERS
Naples

REGULATORS
OFR/FDIC

TOTAL ASSETS AT FAILURE
$87 million

COST TO FDIC
$13 million

DIRECTORS
Dan S. Dugan
Greg Murphy
Jan Kantor
Dennis Prock
Ted Awerkamp
Paul M. Smith
Tom F. Weyl
Scott R. Whitney
Casey Wolff
Brian C. Wood

The Royal Palm Bank of Florida failed in July 2012; the Herald-Tribune has not received regulatory reports from the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, which become available a year after a bank fails.

The FDIC hasn't published a post-mortem on Royal Palm's failure.

According to reports in its hometown newspaper — the Naples Daily News — the bank concentrated heavily on making risky loans to builders and speculators. When the market turned, these loans began going bad and drained the bank of all-important capital.

Mercantile Bancorp, a publicly traded holding company that owned Royal Palm and three other banks based in the Midwest, initially rescued Royal Palm from failure in 2009 with an infusion of $11 million in fresh capital. But Royal Palm ran through that money within two years.

Unable to contribute more, Mercantile had to watch as Royal Palm and another bank in its holding company — Heartland Bank of Leawood, Kan. — were closed by regulators.

Royal Palm planned an 11th-hour sale to another Southwest Florida lenders, but the deal didn't come to fruition before regulators moved in.

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