Nation's best banks list not Florida-friendly

The Gulf Coast scored a zero on a new ranking of the top-performing community banks in the country.

The entire Sunshine State, moreover, only fared one better on the list, which ranked banks with at least $500 million in assets and was compiled by SNL Financial.

That lone institution is Fort Lauderdale-based Stonegate Bank, which has four branches on the Gulf Coast, one in Tampa and three in the Naples-Fort Myers market.

The list, an analysis of year-end data in six categories, looked at banks with fewer than 60 offices and assets between $500 million and $5 billion. The rankings excluded banks that weren't well capitalized, in addition to institutions that didn't have balance sheets made up of at least 33% in loans.

Those qualifications eliminated every bank in Florida, save for Stonegate. The bank, with $855 million in assets, bought Fort Myers-based Southwest Capital Bank and First Commercial Bank of Tampa Bay in separate deals in 2011. The Southwest Capital acquisition was an open-market transaction, while the First Commercial Bank deal was for an FDIC-shuttered institution.

States that fared well on the SNL Financial list include Texas, California, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Those states combined for 37 of the top 100 banks.