When, by 5 p.m. Pacific time, the two men and one woman from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were done with formalities - and FBOP Corp. offices in California had wrapped up business for the day - the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was made receiver of a community institution. And its CEO and sole owner, Mike Kelly, lost Park National Bank, the village icon that was one of FBOP's healthiest subsidiaries and the near bottomless funding source for Kelly's legendary philanthropy.

Saturday morning, Park National and the rest of Kelly's banks - 153 branches total across four states (California, Texas and Arizona, too) - all opened as units of U.S. Bank, the low-key Minneapolis-based chain, already a presence in Oak Park, that's in the league of such coastal giants as J.P. Morgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. In a bidding contest that drew nationwide interest, U.S. Bank ended up being the FDIC's pick for a buyer despite a bottom-of-the-ninth swing by FBOP to present a private and local deal for the required capital.

"We would expect to have a deal done very quickly," Vice President Daniel Watts said Friday morning, noting that a week was needed to close on paperwork with local investors, reportedly a Chicago-based hedge fund.

"Everybody in banking circles in Chicago is as perplexed about this as I am," said Michael Iannaccone, a financial consultant who lives in Oak Park and who in the last decade has helped raise capital for FBOP. "You'd think the regulators would give them more time."

But Oct. 30 was the deadline the feds had set back in July for new capital to be raised.

The federal takeover, feared for months, came after a year of dance steps between federal regulators and the nearly three-decade-old bank-holding company, one that for most of the 1990s was a national model for against-the-odds growth.

Troubles for FBOP Corp. began last fall when the U.S. government seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two federally sponsored mortgage companies. That seizure forced hundreds of banks to write down the value of their preferred shares in these companies to just about nothing. FBOP's loss was $855 million. Hope for a federal bailout was lost when, despite initial approval for funds from TARP - the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program - FBOP was put off because guidelines weren't in place for small, privately held banks. Changes were made to TARP in February, but they instead rendered FBOP ineligible.

Since then, there's been a nonstop search for private investors and continuous industry speculation on Kelly's willingness to step back from control of the company he's been building for 28 years. In 1981, he and a group of investors picked up the ailing Oak Park National Bank on Madison Street at Austin Boulevard. He soon bought out his partners and embarked on what would become his signature approach of solely steering the company. At fire-sale prices, he collected small to midsize banks and turned them around.

FBOP had, according to Iannacconne, the money needed from private equity investors not long after the TARP rejection early this year. The investors, Iannaccone said, asked for a 55 percent share in the company. Kelly then said no. After months of going in circles, FBOP told the FDIC on deadline last week that it now had $650 million in private equity lined up but that one more week was needed to close a deal.

Iannaccone says people used to going by the book, such as the FDIC, couldn't understand the change in approach. "It's sort of a trust issue: Why should we believe you this time?" he said. "He's still a smart banker. He just made a catastrophic mistake."

Also complicating a resolution that might have saved the bank was the condition of a cross-guarantee liability signed off on by Kelly several years back at the insistence of the FDIC. That means that the FDIC can choose to ask that the capital of a healthy bank go to cover one or more of its ailing siblings. Park National - the bank's Chicago-area operations - and a small bank in Texas were financially healthy. "The California banks weren't fine," Iannaccone said. Had this condition not been applied - and it's rare that it is - there would have been flexibility to save banks with adequate reserves.

Oak Park Village President David Pope, a fan of Kelly's intensity, says all Kelly's choices go to issues bigger than anything that lands on a spreadsheet. "For Mike, it's always been about the institution, the people who work here, the communities we serve."

In a letter to staff members that Kelly sent Friday afternoon, he said:

"I regret that we were not able to get a deal done that would save the banks and avoid the disruption that the bank closures will cause in your lives. I know that these closures will have a lasting impact on you, your family and our communities. That said, I am so proud of organizations that you helped grow, and I will always be grateful for the work that you have done."

FBOP employed about 2,400 people. One retiree was Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama's mother. She had worked in the trust department of the Pullman bank.