The small-banking business is in big trouble, as closures of this type of bank approach 100.

And many of them are led by former bankers who played in the big leagues of banking at companies like Wachovia and Bank of America.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized five banks last week, raising the total to 96 so far this year, and the assets of three of those five were bought by a Charlotte, North Carolina, private equity firm headed by former Bank of America investment banking boss Gene Taylor.

Taylor’s group, North American Financial Holdings Inc., bought Metro Bank of Dade County, Turnberry Bank of Aventura, Florida, and Spartanburg, South Carolina-based First National Bank of the South.

North American is the second private equity firm this year to buy the assets of failed banks. Premier American Bank, backed by Bond Street Holdings LLC, has bought three banks.

But with the year half gone, 775 banks are on the FDIC’s troubled list, and closures are likely to blow past last year’s 140 to levels unseen since 1992, FDIC head Sheila Bair has said.

And that has private equity players around the country ready to swoop into the field. And it’s not just high rollers in New York getting into the game, the Baltimore Business Journal reports.

On July 9, Bay Bank FSB bought the assets of Maryland’s struggling Bay National Bank, which was closed by banking regulators.

Bay Bank, headed by veteran banking executives Kevin B. Cashen and Kevin G. Byrnes, is backed by a $24 million investment from Financial Services Partner Fund I. The fund is advised by Hovde Private Equity Partners, a Washington private equity firm that invests in banks and other financial institutions. Private equity firms raise pools of money from investors, which they then use to acquire stakes in companies.

Hovde plans to use Bay Bank as a platform for acquiring other banks, either failed banks acquired from the FDIC or financially healthy banks, said Joseph J. Thomas, Hovde Private Equity Partners’ managing director.