Toppled by loan losses and misstated financial reports, San Francisco’s United Commercial Bank was shut down by regulators tonight and immediately sold to Pasadena’s East West Bancorp, creating by far the largest U.S. bank focused on the Chinese American market.

The combination also will be the largest bank based in Southern California, surpassing City National Bancorp.

No depositors will lose money in the failure of United Commercial, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said. The bank’s 63 U.S. branches, including 17 in Southern California, will reopen Saturday as branches of East West Bank.

United Commercial, a unit of UCBH Holdings, was the fourth-largest bank to fail this year, a position formerly occupied by California National Bank of Los Angeles, which failed last week and was acquired by U.S. Bancorp of Minneapolis.

United Commercial’s collapse, the 120th failure of a U.S. bank this year, may cause a greater-than-usual stir because a year ago it received $299 million in federal bank bailout funds. The FDIC said the seizure would cost the federal deposit insurance fund an estimated $1.4 billion.

East West agreed to assume all of United Commercial’s deposits.

The takeover will greatly expand the reach of East West, which has concentrated on Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to 69 California offices, East West has full-service branches in Houston and Hong Kong.

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