Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Lewis Ranieri, who helped create the mortgage-securities market in the 1980s while at Salmon Brothers Inc., became a victim of its collapse after his Houston-based bank was seized.
Franklin Bank Corp., formed by Ranieri in 2002, was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and its deposits handed over to Prosperity Bank, the FDIC said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The failed bank's 46 offices will open as branches of Prosperity, the FDIC said.
Ranieri, 61, a former Salomon Brothers vice chairman, formed Franklin in 2002 and over the next four years expanded the bank's lending operations. While Franklin avoided the subprime mortgage market, his firm was burned by loans to builders in California, Arizona, Florida and Michigan, where foreclosures are among the highest in the U.S. In November 2006 and again a year later, he predicted the market would get worse.
``The subprime crisis has spread to other sectors of the housing market,'' Ranieri said in a conference call a year ago. It's ``having a significant effect on housing and builders.''
Franklin and Security Pacific Bank of Los Angeles became the 18th and 19th U.S. banks seized this year amid the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. Franklin's $3.7 billion in deposits were assumed by Prosperity, and Security Pacific's $450.1 million in deposits are now controlled by San Diego-based PacWest Bancorp. All deposits from both banks are still insured, the FDIC said.
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Franklin's Decline
Franklin lost more than three-fourths of its market value during 2007 as bad home and commercial loans doubled. Ranieri said in December 2006 at an industry conference that investors in mortgage-backed bonds had no idea of the risks they were taking. Ranieri's assistant said he wasn't available for comment yesterday.
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The U.S. closed 27 banks from October 2000 through the end of last year, according to a list at fdic.gov.