Colonial BancGroup Inc.'s lawyers say that a pair of recent appellate court rulings in favor of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over bank-holding company creditors actually strengthens its claim to hundreds of millions of dollars in disputed tax refunds, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Lawyers for Colonial said in a Friday court filing that the recent rulings in favor of the FDIC over creditors of the former parents of NetBank and BankUnited actually confirm that the holding company owns the tax refunds because under Colonial's tax sharing agreement the holding company, not Colonial Bank, pays all the taxes. At issue is more than $600 million in tax refunds, deposits and securities that went up for grabs when Colonial Bank was shut down four years ago and the FDIC took over as the receiver for the defunct bank.
