Only three banks went down this Friday. Do you think that having let the private equity guys see the brass ring that Sheila is now teasing them a little by holding back on some of the bigger prizes?

Anyway, here are the links.

Affinity Bank, Ventura, California

Main Street Bank, Forest Lakes, Minnesota

Bradford Bank, Baltimore, Maryland

For whatever it’s worth, I did quite a bit of business with Affinity Bank earlier in the decade. They specialized in commercial real estate loans, had some real pros that knew that business inside and out and, frankly, were pretty conservative versus the competition. They never had the easiest terms or the cheapest price but you could always count on them coming through with their commitment once they said they would do the deal.

I don’t know what took them down. Maybe they started playing faster and looser in the CRE business just to keep up or possibly because they were so specialized, they just got too far into CRE. Here’s a really creepy suggestion though. Maybe CRE is so screwed up that nobody, no matter how careful they might have been, can survive if they have a lot of exposure to that sector.

If that’s the case then there are a lot of banks in big trouble.