Increasing the number of “failed institutions” in State, the regulators have finally closed five banks in Florida, California and Nevada.

The recent closure has elevated the national number of such banks to 78. Approximately 13 banks have been shut in Florida, 6 in California and 2 in Nevada.

US regulators seized 7 Illinois banks, this Friday, with Amcore Bank being the largest among them. Broadway Bank in Chicago, which is closely associated with the Democratic candidate running for President Obama's previous Senate seat, is one of the seized banks.

Regulators closed four banks in Georgia and one each in Florida and Arizona on Friday, which brought the number of bank failures to 41, for the year 2010. They captured Desert Hills Bank of Phoenix which had six branches. The FDIC said that it had $496.6 million in assets and $426.5 million in deposits as of Dec. 31, 2009.

Washington-based Horizon Bank became the first US bank to be closed by the regulators in 2010, costing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation around $540 million.

FDIC said that Seattle-based lender, Washington Federal, would take over roughly all of Horizon's $1.3 billion in assets and $1.2 billion in deposits.

As per the media reports, a government program aimed at supporting solvent banks purge of bad loans, is being used to aid federal officials cope with a growingly bloated portfolio of assets from seized banks.

In one of the first lawsuits to dispute the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp's authority over seized banking assets, Washington Mutual Inc (WMI) has sued the federal agency for considerably more than $13 billion with regard to the loss of its banking operations.