Team Financial Inc fka TFIN

[Estrella]

Great Southern Bancorp shares advance after TeamBank deal

Mar 24, 2009 (The Kansas City Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Team Financial's pain has become Great Southern Bancorp's gain.
Both were players in Friday's failure of the $670 million TeamBank and an affiliated Colorado bank.

Team Financial, based in Paola, Kan., owned both banks and had disclosed to shareholders Friday that it might end up in bankruptcy.

In a brief filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Team Financial said regulators had rejected its plan to boost capital at TeamBank and might seize both banks.

Regulators did just that late Friday, leaving Team Financial with little to call its own.

Its owners' shares lost 8 cents and closed at 21 cents, a 27.6 percent drop.

Company officials were not available Monday.

Great Southern Bancorp, on the other hand, picked up TeamBank's branches and depositors in a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

It also bought $450 million in loans and foreclosed properties that TeamBank held. But given that a fourth of TeamBank's loans were not current, Great Southern had to pay only $350 million.

Moreover, the FDIC will absorb 80 percent of the first $115 million in losses, if they develop. The FDIC's burden will grow to 95 percent of any losses beyond $115 million.

Joe Turner, president of Great Southern and its parent company, said the loss sharing agreement was a standard package in an FDIC sale of a failed bank.

But Turner also said Great Southern, which is based in the Springfield area, had gained a good deposit franchise, "a lot of good loans" and, he hopes, some new customers as well.

The deal establishes Great Southern's first branches in Kansas, though it has had a loan office in Johnson County and in Omaha, Neb.

The market's take on the deal? Great Southern Bancorp shares surged 22.5 percent, a gain of $2.50, and closed at $13.60.

Of course, the gain came on a day when bank stocks surged generally after the U.S. Treasury announced the long-awaited details of its plan to buy toxic assets off banks' balance sheets.

But Great Southern's bump easily topped that of the Nasdaq bank index, up 10.6 percent, and other public banks in the Kansas City area.

To reach Mark Davis, call 816-234-4372 or send e-mail to [e-mail].



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