Regulators shut down three more banking institutions in the US last week - one in Georgia and two in California - taking the number of federally-insured operations to be closed this year to 22.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has been appointed as receiver of the Georgia bank, based in Loganville, which had $681 million in assets and $611.4 million in deposits as of 17 October.

The FDIC has said that all of the bank's deposits and around $84.4 million of its assets would be acquired by Bank of Essex of Tappahannock, Virginia.

The Office of Thrift Supervision also seized Downey Savings & Loan in Newport Beach, and PFF Bank & Trust in Ponoma in California. They cited hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans that resulted from the housing bubble that rendered the Southern California banking fixtures financially unsound. Reports suggested that the branches of these banks would continue to operate under the ownership of Minneapolis-based US Bank.

Downey S&L had $12.8 billion in assets, while PFF had around $3.7 billion in assets. Both banks had heavy exposures to the depressed real estate market in Southern California, and reports suggested that their demise was sure to come.