Bosses of BofA are going to buy Florida banking assets?

According to the recent report of Bloomberg Hugh McColl Jr. and Marc Oken ex-CEO and CFO of Bank of America Corp accordingly are among investors backing a group raising as much as $600 million to buy Florida banking assets.

Falfurrias Capital Partners, a Charlotte, North Carolina- based investment firm co-founded by McColl, 74, and Oken, 63, has agreed to invest an undisclosed amount in North American Financial Holdings, Oken said in an interview. North American is led by Gene Taylor, former head of corporate and investment banking at Bank of America, and Chris Marshall, a former Bank of America executive who was chief financial officer at Fifth Third Bancorp from May 2006 through April 2008.

Buyout firms are piling into the banking industry as it recovers from more than $1.7 trillion in credit losses sparked by the housing market collapse and global recession. Raising money is proving easier than acquiring regulatory approval to buy one of the hundreds of small U.S. banks expected to fail over the next few years, said John Douglas, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, a New York law firm.

“There’s a suspicion among regulators that private-equity groups are in it for a quick buck or you will make regulators look bad if you buy something cheap and then turn around and flip it,” Douglas said. “Regulators seem to believe that existing institutions can absorb enough of the failed banks to get by.”

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has overseen 140 bank failures this year, the fastest pace of dissolutions in 17 years. The FDIC had 552 banks with $345.9 billion in assets on its confidential problem list as of Sept. 30.

Source: Bloomberg