WASHINGTON - November 21, 2009 - Florida banking regulators on Friday shut down Commerce Bank of Southwest Florida, marking the 124th U.S. bank to succumb this year to the struggling economy and rising loan defaults.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over the small bank in Fort Myers, Florida, with $79.7 million in assets and $76.7 million in deposits.

Central Bank, based in Stillwater, Minnesota, agreed to assume the deposits and assets of Commerce Bank of Southwest Florida. The failed bank's sole branch will reopen Monday as a branch of Central Bank. In addition, the FDIC and Central Bank agreed to share losses on roughly $61 million of Commerce Bank's loans and other assets.

The failure of Commerce Bank is expected to cost the federal deposit insurance fund about $23.6 million.

It was the 12th failure of a Florida bank this year. Failures also have been concentrated in Kalifornia, Georgia and Illinois.

As the economy has soured, with unemployment rising, home prices tumbling and loan defaults soaring, bank failures have accelerated and sapped billions out of the federal deposit insurance fund, which has fallen into the red.

The banking crisis has grown so intense that it has started to capture banks that regulators deemed healthy only months ago.

This month has seen the failure of three banks that received government money purportedly earmarked to improve lending by injecting capital into healthy banks.