United Bank, which has three Covington locations, recently purchased $131 million in assets from the FDIC, following the failure of Barnesville-based First National Bank, which had one location each in Barnesville and Zebulon.

First National’s failure is the 16th bank failure in Georgia this year, and the 136th failure of an FDIC-insured bank in the U.S. this year.

United Bank now has 23 banking locations in 11 counties around metro Atlanta and a combined $1 billion in assets, $110 million in capital and employs more than 350 people. Previously, United Bank purchased the assets of First Coweta Bank in Newnan in 2009 and First Georgia Community Bank in Jackson in 2008.

"Barnesville is a wonderful community and is extremely important to United Bank. When we learned after the bid deadline that the FDIC received no acceptable bids for First National we felt we had to act. We couldn’t allow this bank to close, negatively impacting so many customers, employees and a community that means so much to us," said Jim Edwards, CEO of United Bank.

United Bank is headquartered in Zebulon, the capital of Pike County, where it was founded as the Bank of Zebulon in 1905.