Alpha will reopen as Stearns

Come Monday morning, banking for customers of the former Alpha Bank and Trust should be back to normal, an FDIC official at the bank said Saturday.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials are spending the weekend combing through Alpha’s records so the institution can open Monday as Stearns Bank, said Linda Beavers, a regional ombudsman with the deposit insurance company. Some signs already had been changed by Saturday morning to reflect the new ownership.

Friday, FDIC and state officials closed Alpha’s Alpharetta and Marietta branches without warning. The closing limited some customers’ access to funds.

Attempts to contact bank officials on Saturday for comment were unsuccessful. A woman who answered the phone at the home of D. Michael Sleeth, listed as the chief financial officer and executive vice president of Alpha Bank, said he would have no comment.

According to the FDIC, Alpha Bank had total assets of $354.1 million and total deposits of $346.2 million as of Sept. 30.

Alpha also had approximately $16.8 million in brokered deposits that were not part of Friday’s transaction. The FDIC will pay the brokers directly for the amount of their insured funds, an FDIC news release said.

Alpha was the third bank failure in Georgia to follow the real estate slump, mortgage meltdown and credit crunch. Integrity Bank was shuttered in August. NetBank shut down in September 2007. All three banks were based in Alpharetta.

Beavers said she couldn’t say how many customers Alpha had, but the FDIC news release said at the time of closing, there were approximately $3.1 million in uninsured deposits held in approximately 59 accounts that potentially exceeded the insurance limits. This amount is an estimate that is likely to change once the FDIC obtains additional information from these customers, the release said.

Beavers said it is possible that all of the identified accounts will be fully insured because each person on the account is insured up to $250,000.

That is the case for Scott and Nancy Smith of Alpharetta, who have more than $250,000 in certificates of deposit. According to FDIC rules and regulations, the Smiths could have $500,000 in the bank and still be covered, so he is not worried, Scott Smith said.

Smith said he and his wife will continue to use community banks, even though two of the three where they have accounts, Alpha and Integrity, have been taken over.

“We just have to make sure the money is spread out,” he said.

Alpha was high on a recent list of banks with a disproportionate number of problem loans. Using the “Texas ratio,” which compares problem loans to capital and reserves available to absorb losses, FIG Partners calculated earlier this year that Alpha had the fourth- worst ratio among area banks, behind institutions in Suwanee, Loganville and Stockbridge.