Commercial Real Estate Direct Staff Report
The FDIC has put a portfolio of $1.1 billion of assets from the failed First NBC Bank of New Orleans on the sales block, marking one of the largest whole-loan offering by the agency in years.
DebtX has been tapped to market and sell the portfolio, which is comprised of a broad mix of business, residential and commercial real estate loans. The Boston loan-sales adviser has divided the portfolio into two components. It will take offers on Sept. 12 for a portfolio of $117 million of energy-related assets in Louisiana, and on Sept. 26, it will take offers for each of 17 remaining pools totaling $1.04 billion.
Among those is a $1.4 million nonperforming loan against a Louisiana apartment property; a performing $951,882 loan against a Florida retail center; a performing $801,715 loan against a retail center in Louisiana; performing $728,166 loan against a Florida office property, and four loans totaling $5.9 million against commercial properties in Louisiana.
First NBC Bank was launched in 2006 by Ashton J. Ryan Jr., who previously had run First National Bank of Commerce, also of New Orleans. That bank, prominent in the city during its time, ultimately was acquired by what then was Bank One.
First NBC was launched to much fanfare, in part because it had set a Louisiana record for capital raised by a start-up. Among its early investors were Peyton and Eli Manning, the star professional football quarterbacks and New Orleans natives. In 2013, the bank went public, having grown rapidly, largely through acquisitions.
Given its location, it compiled a large exposure to the now-struggling oil and gas industry. It also had developed a tax-credit investment business, where it would invest in federal and state low-income housing tax credits that were used as equity for certain projects. It also would provide construction financing for them. The tax credits it invested in typically didn't generate immediate profit, and eventually led to the bank substantially writing down their value. At the same time, the bank's nonperforming loan portfolio grew.
So last April, FDIC took over the institution as receiver. It sold the bank's deposits to Whitney Bank, also of New Orleans, which also bought about $1 billion of First NBC's assets, leaving the FDIC with the remainder to liquidate. The bank became the fourth to fail this year. Another two have failed since.
First NBC was the largest bank to fail since Doral Bank of San Juan, Puerto Rico, which had $5.9 billion of assets and failed in early 2015.
DebtX expects it will complete the sale of the $117 million portfolio by Sept. 29. Closing for the remaining 17 pools is set for Oct. 18. The company has handled 77 transactions involving a total of more than $5.4 billion of assets for the FDIC since 2007.
Comments? E-mail Orest Mandzy, or call him at (267) 247-0112, Ext. 211.

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