Regulators closed seven more banks Friday - all in different states - pushing the total for the year beyond 100.

The biggest bank to fail was Crescent Bank and Trust Co., of Jasper, Ga., which had just over $1 billion in assets. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., as receiver, arranged for Renasant Bank, of Tupelo, Miss., to take over Crescent's 11 branches, its $965.7 million in deposits and virtually all of its assets.

This week's closings boosted the toll so far this year to 103, compared with 64 for the same period of 2009.

The other banks seized Friday were:

n  Sterling Bank, of Lantana, Fla., which had $407.9 million in assets and $372.4 million in deposits.

n  Home Valley Bank, of Cave Junction, Ore., with $251.8 million in assets and $229.6 million in deposits.

n  SouthwestUSA Bank, of Las Vegas, which had $214 million in assets and $186.7 million in assets.

n  Williamsburg First National Bank, of Kingstree, S.C., which had $139.3 million in assets and $134.3 million in deposits.

n  Community Security Bank, in New Prague, Minn., with $108 million in assets and $99.7 million in deposits.

n  Thunder Bank, of Sylvan Grove, Kan., with $32.6 million in assets and $28.5 million in deposits.  

IberiaBank, based in Lafayette, La, took over Sterling's six branches, along with its deposits and assets. It entered into a loss-sharing deal with the FDIC on $244.3 million of the failed bank's assets.

The Federal Reserve said in a June enforcement order that Sterling was "severely undercapitalized,'' and told the bank to either raise additional funds or find a buyer. Crescent Bank and Trust also had been given 30 days to solve its financial problems or face closure.

South Valley Bank & Trust Co., of Klamath Falls, Ore., bought Home Valley's five branches and its assets and deposits. The FDIC agreed to share in any losses on $211.6 million of the assets.

Plaza Bank, of Irvine, Calif., acquired SouthwestUSA's lone branch, its deposits and $137.3 million of its assets. The FDIC will share in any losses on $111.3 million of those assets, and will retain another $49.4 of the closed bank's assets for later disposition.

First Citizens Bank and Trust Co., of Columbia, S.C. took over Williamsburg First National's five branches and all of its deposits and assets. It entered into a loss-sharing deal on $64.4 million of the assets.

Roundbank, of Waseca, Minn., absorbed Community Security Bank, while Bennington State Bank, of Salina, Kan., took over Thunder Bank.

The FDIC said the seven closings would cost its deposit insurance fund an estimated $431 million.

This week, President Obama signed into law the most sweeping regulatory changes the financial services industry has seen in decades. The bill also quietly and unceremoniously turned the page on the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

That's not to say TARP will come to end - the Treasury Department will likely spend years collecting from the companies that have yet to repay their government aid.

BailoutSleuth examined the roster of companies that accepted money through TARP's Capital Purchase Program - the bank bailout - to determine which of its more than 700 participants owe the most.

Through the end of June, 82 banks -- including 8 of the 10 with the largest government investments -- had repaid some or all their preferred shares. But the program still has $58 billion outstanding, according to Treasury's latest transactions summary.

Below are 10 banks and holding companies that have the largest obligations to taxpayers.

10.  Synovus Financial Corp.; holding company for 30 banks

$967.9 million outstanding

Synovus is the holding company for 30 different banks based in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. Its largest, Synovus Bank, has more than 300 branches across the south, although the company is in the process of consolidating its charters.

The company received its TARP aid in December 2008 and has yet to pay any of it back. Synovus raised $1 billion from private investors this spring, although that funding will not immediately be used to retire the TARP debt.

In May 2009, Synovus' then-president and chief operating officer, Fred Green III, left the company unexpectedly. He was later replaced by Kessel D. Stelling Jr.  Last month, CEO Richard Anthony took an indefinite leave of absence to combat what the company said was a blood vessel disorder. Stelling became acting CEO.

9.  Huntington Bancshares; holding company for The Hunting National Bank

$1.4 billion outstanding

The bank, based in Columbus, Ohio, has 832 branches across the country. Huntington received $1.4 billion in government investment in November 2008, and it has yet to redeem any of the preferred stock it issued to the Treasury in that deal.

Standard & Poor's recently upgraded its outlook on the company to positive from negative, after the company reported its first quarterly profit in two years.

8.  Zions Bancorp; holding company for Zions First National Bank and others

$1.4 billion outstanding

Zions Bancorp is the holding company for eight different banks based in the west, the largest of which are the 148-branch Zions First National Bank, the 114-branch California Bank & Trust and the 97-branch Amegy Bank N.A.

The company hasn't repaid any of the $1.4 billion it received through TARP in  November 2008. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the company has raised $615 million in new capital since mid-May. "We are preparing ourselves for an eventual repayment of TARP, and so that's one of the potential uses of the money," James Abbott, head of investor relations for the company, told the newspaper.

7.  Marshall & Ilsley; holding company for M&I Marshall and Ilsley Bank

$1.7 billion outstanding

Four banks are under the Marshall & Ilsley umbrella, including Milwaukee's M&I Marshall and Ilsley Bank, which has 370 branches. The holding company received $1.7 billion in taxpayer aid in November 2008 but hasn't paid any of it back. The bank, with branches in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Kansas Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin, recently extended a moratorium on home foreclosures.  

6.  CIT Group Inc.

$2.3 billion outstanding

Taxpayers should not expect to see any of this money again. CIT filed for bankruptcy Nov. 1, 2009, and is the largest of four TARP financial institutions to fail. Treasury's investment in CIT is now valued at zero.

CIT has become a flashpoint in the TARP debate, since Treasury initially insisted that only health banks would receive taxpayer assistance -- yet CIT went bust less than a year after getting billions in aid. Although the results of bankruptcy proceeds may give taxpayers a chance at partial recovery, don't hold your breath.

"Treasury expects to lose its entire investment in CIT," Treasury Secretary Geithner said earlier this year.

5.  KeyCorp; holding company for KeyBank N.A.

$2.5 billion outstanding

The bank has yet to repay any of the aid it received in November 2008. With more than 1,000 branches in 15 states, this institution - along with Synovus Financial Corp and Regions Financial Corp. -- may become buyout candidates as merger-and-acqusition activitiy returns to the banking sector, Reuters reported.

4.  Fifth Third Bancorp; holding company for Fifth Third Bank

$3.4 billion outstanding

Fifth Third has not redeemed any of the preferred stock that it sold to the government on New Year's Eve 2008. The Cincinnati-based bank has more than 1,300 branches in 12 states. Fifth Third -- along with Huntington and KeyCorp -- could be a target of Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, which is seeking a stake in a U.S. bank, Bloomberg recently reported.

3.  Regions Financial Corp.; holding company for Regions Bank

$3.5 billion outstanding

Regions Bank has more than 1,800 branches in 16 states. It got $3.5 billion loan in TARP money in November 2008 and hasn't paid any of that back.

 The company's former CEO Dowd Ritter -- who retired April 1 -- was named the second "least valuable" leader of a financial institution by Bloomberg Markets Magazine for earning $9.67 million in 2009, while the company lost more than $6.6 billion from 2008 to 2009. KeyCorp's Henry Meyer II got the top title.

2.  SunTrust; holding company for SunTrust Bank

$4.9 billion outstanding

Georgia' largest bank has more than 1,700 branches in 11 states, plus Washington, D.C. It received a pair of capital injections via TARP, taking in $3.5 billion in November 2008 and additional $1.35 billion the following month. It has not repaid any of the government's investment.

Last week SunTrust sold $17 billion in managed assets held by a subsidiary to Pittsburgh's Federated Investors. TheStreet.com is speculating that UK's Barclays may make a bid for SunTrust, which is struggling due to its exposure to residential real estate in Florida, a state that has been hit hard by a wave of foreclosures.

1. Citigroup; holding company for Citibank

$14.5 billion outstanding

The TARP recipient with the largest outstanding balance, Citigroup ran into trouble largely because of it exposure to collateralized debt obligations, which once were viewed as relatively safe investments. Backed by home loans - and in some cases sub-prime home loans - their value plummeted once the housing bubble burst in 2008.

Citigroup received $25 billion in Treasury's first wave of Capital Purchase Program investments in October 2008. Less than two months later, it got a controversial second bailout of $20 billion through another TARP vehicle, the Targeted Investment Program (Bank of America was the only other TIP recipient).

In December 2009, Citigroup repaid all $20 billion of its TIP money. As for the remaining $25 billion, Treasury converted the Citigroup preferred stock it received for that money into 7.7 billion shares of common stock, giving the government a 27 percent ownership stake in the company.

In May, Treasury sold a portion of the shares for $6.2 billion, and in June another sale yielded $4.3 billion. The agency said today it has given Morgan Stanley, its sales agent, the authority to sell another 1.5 billion shares. If the brokerage completes all of those sales, Treasury would have 3.6 billion shares remaining.

Citigroup's stock is currently trading for around $4 a share.

Eight banks are creeping closer to granting the Treasury Department the right to appoint directors to their boards, through their failure to make quarterly dividend payments on their TARP aid, the program's Special Inspector General revealed Wednesday.

Banks that got taxpayer money through the Troubled Asset Relief Program were required to issue preferred stock or other securities to the Treasury and to make regular dividend payments.

If a TARP recipient misses six quarterly payments in a row, Treasury gets the right to appoint two directors to its board.

In his latest quarterly report, TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky said that Saigon National Bank in Westminster, Calif., is the first -- and so far only -- only bank to miss six consecutive dividend payments.

The report said Treasury currently is working on a strategy for appointing representatives to Saigon's board.

Barofsky's report noted that eight other institutions have now missed five consecutive payments, totaling $25 million. Thus, they are dangerously close to hitting the threshold for Treasury intervention.

The banks that missed five payments - and the size of the government's TARP investment - are:

-- Anchor BanCorp Wisconsin Inc., holding company for AnchorBank, $110 million

-- Blue Valley Ban Corp., holding company for Bank of Blue Valley, $21.8 million

-- Commonwealth Business Bank, $7.7 million

-- Lone Star Bank, $3.1 million.

-- OneUnited Bank, $12.1 million

-- Pacific Capital Bank, $180.6 million

-- Seacoast Banking Corporation of Florida/Seacoast National Bank, $50 million

-- United American Bank, $8.7 million

A total of 105 banks that got government money through TARP's Capital Purchase Program have missed at least one quarterly payment. Those missed payments total $159.8 million.

The report also reiterated criticisms of TARP issued by Barofsky's office over the past quarter, including concerns about the abrupt closing of auto dealerships by Chrysler LLC and General Motors Corp., and the process by which Treasury has been selling stock warrants it received as part of its bank investments.

And the study issued the special inspector general's most stinging criticism yet of the Home Affordable Modification Program, a $50 billion effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure through mortgage modifications.

Barofsky and other watchdogs have hammered the department over its refusal to state how many homeowners it expects to assist through HAMP modifications.

"Without such clearly defined standards, positive comments regarding the progress or success of HAMP are simply not credible, and the growing public suspicion that the program is an outright failure will continue to spread," the report said.

Barofsky's report also took Treasury to task for failing to implement some of his office's previous recommendations, such as the need for detailed documentation of communications surrounding warrant repurchases and the need for independent analyses of companies that received extraordinary TARP assistance.

The report also noted that through the end of June, Barofsky's office had 104 active criminal and civil investigations, up from 84 the previous quarter. The investigations cover subjects including TARP fraud, accounting fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, bank fraud, mortgage fraud, public corruption, false statements, obstruction of justice, trade secrets theft, money laundering and tax issues.

Baforsky's report also revealed that his office will produce a study of  how Treasury hires contractors to administer TARP; whether their prices are fair and reasonable; and whether vendors are performing all their work.

In 2008, BailoutSleuth revealed that when Treasury released a copy of a contract with Bank of New York Mellon Corp., it blacked out the section indicating how much the company would earn for its work administering the assets of the $700 billion TARP initiative.

Contracts with law firms, accounting firms and financial services firms handling other portions of TARP were similarly redacted.

According to Barofsky's quarterly report, other forthcoming audits will examine:

-- The status of Citigroup and the Asset Guarantee Program

-- Capital Purchase Program applications that received conditional approval

-- The selection of asset managers for the legacy securities program

-- Collateral securing loans issued through the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, known as TALF

-- Whether pay czar Kenneth Feinberg applied compensation criteria consistently for all TARP recipients subject to pay rules and review

-- The exit strategy for the Capital Purchase Program

-- HAMP's "net present value test," which is used to determine whether borrowers are eligible for the program

The government's three TARP watchdogs testified before the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday and continued to criticize the government's  much-maligned mortgage modification program.

The complaints about the Home Affordable Modification Program came just a day after the Treasury Department released its latest statistics regarding its progress. Last month, the number of borrowers booted from the program was 40,000 higher than the number of borrower who were granted permanent modifications.

Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel, said that homeowners needed a program with "far more urgency." She said that for every one family that has received a permanent modification, 10 have been put through the foreclosure process.

"This is a program that's just behind the curve," said Warren, who has previously grilled Treasury officials on the subject of HAMP during her panel's hearings. She suggested that loan servicers are dragging their feet on implementing the program because sometimes they stand to gain more from a foreclosure than a modification.

Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, called Treasury's stated goal of wanting to offer 3 to 4 million modifications "meaningless." He said that unless Treasury "comes clean" and offers some serious goals and expectations of how many people will be helped by HAMP, taxpayers will conclude that the program is an "outright failure."

Barofsky also repeated findings from another report discussing inconsistent treatment of companies that were negotiating the re-purchase of the stock warrants they issued to the government in connection with their TARP aid.

Some were given more insight than other into what prices Treasury was willing to accept. He urged Treasury to be more transparent in that process.

"Transparency isn't just for transparency's sake," Barofsky said. "It makes programs better. It makes them more credible."

Warren reiterated her warning of a coming commercial real estate crisis for banks that have heavy concentrations in those fields, and she touched on problems that small banks may have in exiting TARP. Both were subjects of recent COP reports.

Barofsky repeated criticisms from his office's recent reports on auto dealership closures.

He said it was important that Treasury start acknowledging its mistakes. "Those are words we don't hear," Barofsky said. "We never hear any acknowledgment that they are fallible, that they are human."

The Treasury Department released the latest figures for its mortgage modification program Tuesday. And once again, it's more of the same: The program seems to be better at kicking borrowers out than keeping them in.

The number of homeowners removed from the $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program last month far exceeded the number of homeowners who received permanent mortgage modifications.

Qualifying homeowners seeking modifications are initially placed into trial modifications that last several months. If their paperwork checks out and they make their payments on time, they can eventually receive permanent modifications that last for five years.

But in June, companies in the program cancelled 91,118 trial modifications, compared to the 51,205 trial modifications that were converted into permanent ones.

The total number of cancellations since the HAMP program's inception increased by 21.2 percent to 520,814, while conversions of trials to permanent modifications increased by 14.8 percent, to 398,021.

In a conference call with reporters, Treasury officials attributed those cancellations largely to borrowers who submitted incomplete documentation and missed payments during the trial period.

They said cancellations continue to be high because servicers are responding to a Treasury directive that they clear their backlogs of "aged" HAMP trial modifications that have been in limbo for at least six months. More than 60 percent of the cancellations were aged trials, according to the study.

Still, about 166,000 aged trials remain, with the majority of those attributed to two big services, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase Bank. Servicers were supposed to have cleared their backlog of aged HAMP trials by the end of June, said Phyllis Caldwell, who leads Treasury's home preservation office.

Nearly half the homeowners booted from their HAMP trials received offers of non-governmental, proprietary modifications from their servicers, Treasury officials emphasized, and fewer than 10 percent of cancelled trial modifications have entered the foreclosure process.

But it's unclear how helpful those proprietary modifications will be in the long-term. While permanent modifications give borrowers an average savings of $510 per month, the government does not track what sort of savings borrowers can expect from non-HAMP modifications.

Critics of HAMP say servicers steer borrowers - desperate for any relief at all - into packages that aren't in their best interest.

Bank of America had the worst conversion rate among the largest mortgage servicers, turning just 23 percent of its HAMP trials into permanent modifications. Other major servicers -- including Wells Fargo Bank, JPMorgan Chase Bank, and CitiMortgage, for example - had conversion rates that hovered around the same level.

Ocwen Financial Corp. was the only servicer among the top 10 largest participants to convert the majority of its trials into permanent modifications. Its conversation rate was more than 60 percent.

The latest HAMP statistics will likely give more ammunition to the program's critics, such as the Congressional Oversight Panel, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the General Accounting Office, and the House Oversight Committee.

All have pointed out flaws in the program. The common criticisms include its inconsistent treatment of borrowers, a lack of clear consequences for servicers that don't comply with program requirements, and the absence of a clear barometer against which the program's success can be measured.

Those criticisms and others will likely come up Wednesday, when TARP special inspector general Neil Barofsky, COP Chair Elizabeth Warren, and Richard Hillman -- who heads the financial team at GAO -- testify before the Senate Finance Committee

Regulators closed six banks tonight  - including three in Florida - bringing the total number of closures this year to 96.

Unusually, three of the failed banks were acquired by a single institution, NAFH National Bank in Miami.

NAFH, led by former Bank of America executive, is a new entity created for the purpose of acquiring failed banks, according to the Jacksonville Business Journal.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. arranged for NAFH to acquire all of the assets and deposits of Metro Bank of Dade County in Miami, Turnberry Bank in Aventura, Fla., and First National Bank of the South in Spartanburg, S.C. The three banks collectively operated 23 branches and will resume operations under their original names.

·       Metro Bank had assetsof $442.3 million and deposits of $391.3 million

·        Turnberry Bank had assets of $263.9 million and deposits of $196.9 million; 

·        First National Bank of the South had assets of $682.0 million and deposits of $610.1 million.