Ameris Bancorp has acquired its third failed bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Co. in the last eight months.
Represented by Jody L. Spencer at Rogers & Hardin, Moultrie-based Ameris announced that a subsidiary has agreed to assume $134 million in deposits and acquire about $142.3 million in the assets of Satilla Community Bank, a single-office financial institution based in St. Marys, in South Georgia near Cumberland Island and the Florida state line.
Spencer said he is not yet sure exactly what Ameris is paying for the bank. "That is one of a couple of numbers I don't have yet," he said, adding that the numbers will appear in an 8-K Ameris is due to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission today.
The Georgia Department of Banking and Finance declared the Satilla bank closed on May 14, appointing the FDIC, which was represented in this transaction by its in-house counsel, as receiver. Ameris reopened the bank on Monday as one of its now-54 branches in Georgia, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina. 
Ameris agreed to pay the FDIC a premium of 0.19 percent to assume all of Satilla Community Bank's deposits, and the two entities entered into a loss-share transaction on about 80 percent of the assets, as per FDIC policy, Spencer said.
Spencer also said that deals such as this ramp up several weeks prior to a bank's closure, when the FDIC contacts financial institutions it thinks might be a good fit as an acquirer. The FDIC, he said, invites banks to bid on the soon-to-be-closed bank, and other than the price for assets and liabilities to be acquired, there's not much to negotiate under the FDIC's structure.
"It's quite a streamlined process," he said.
FDIC lawyers do not comment on their transactions.
The deal was funded in part by an underwritten public offering of Ameris stock that grossed $90 million when it closed April 20. SEC documents dating to the offering's announcement, in March, said Ameris planned to use the net proceeds "for general corporate purposes, including to fund possible future acquisitions of other financial services businesses (which may include FDIC-assisted transactions)."
Ameris, a financial holding company and the parent company of Ameris Bank, has recent experience with FDIC-assisted transactions in Georgia. In October, it bought Lawrenceville-based American United Bank, which had $85.7 million in loans and $100.3 million in deposits. A month later, Ameris purchased United Security Bank, with branches in Woodstock and Sparta, which had $108.4 million in loans and $140 million in deposits.
While Ameris will pay the FDIC for the Satilla bank, in these prior two transactions, the FDIC paid Ameris a total of about $41.3 million.
Rogers & Hardin was involved in both deals.
According to information from the FDIC, 27 banks have closed in Georgia in the past 12 months, eight of them this year.