BB&T an improvement for Colonial customers, consultant says

Miami banking consultant Ken Thomas said depositors and borrowers at Colonial Bank will fare better under North Carolina-based BB&T, which took over the bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. closed Alabama-based Colonial and sold it to BB&T last week after a criminal probe. It was the biggest bank failure since the September collapse of Washington Mutual. Colonial had twice as many Florida branches as BB&T, including 46 in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The government investigated the alleged accounting irregularities at Colonial’s mortgage warehouse lending unit in Orlando, as well as its bid for federal bailout funds and its accounting for loan loss reserves.