Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., replenishing funds after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, faces additional strains on its resources after spending $2.5 billion to shut nine banks last week.

U.S. Bancorp’s Oct. 30 acquisition of the banks owned by closely held FBOP Corp. required tapping the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund, which had a negative balance as of Sept. 30, the agency said. The FDIC, expecting failures to continue through 2010, asked banks to prepay three years of premiums to raise $45 billion for the fund depleted by 115 shutdowns this year.

“The failure of nine banks totaling almost $20 billion in assets is a further substantial blow to the deposit insurance fund,” said Kevin Petrasic, a lawyer at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP in Washington and former special counsel at the Office of Thrift Supervision. “The FDIC clearly has its work cut out for it to try to right the fund.”

Regulators are closing banks at the fastest pace since 1992 during the savings-and-loan crisis. This year’s surge after 25 banks were shut in 2008 pushed the industry-supported deposit insurance fund into a deficit in the third quarter for the first time since 1991, according to agency estimates. The negative balance reflected $32 billion the FDIC had set aside for failures expected through June 30.

Failures will peak next year, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said Oct. 14 during testimony before a Senate subcommittee. The agency had 416 banks on its confidential problem list of lenders deemed at heightened risk of failure as of June 30. Most banks on the list don’t fail, Bair has said.

‘Fully Prepared’

“The pace of closings remains within our expectations and we are fully prepared to handle the workload,” FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray said. “We are taking the necessary actions, including the prepaid assessment, to ensure we continue to handle resolutions smoothly.”

The FDIC has several options for replenishing its reserves, including tapping a $100 billion line of credit with the Treasury Department that can be expanded to $500 billion with the consent of the Federal Reserve and Treasury, charging the banking industry a special fee in addition to the levies they already pay and borrowing directly from banks.

“I expect failures to accelerate when the FDIC fund gets the infusion of prepaid assessments funds,” said Chip MacDonald, a partner specializing in financial services at law firm Jones Day in Atlanta.

The FDIC is required by law to rebuild the fund, which protects deposits up to $250,000 per account in the event of a bank failure, when the balance divided by insured deposits falls below 1.15 percent.

“Because the FDIC has many potential sources of cash, a negative fund balance does not affect the FDIC’s ability to protect insured depositors or promptly resolve failed institutions,” Bair said during her Senate testimony.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Vekshin in Washington at avekshin@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 2, 2009 00:01 EST