This paper primarily studies the pricing of insolvent banks that are sold under the purchase and assumption resolution method of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). We analyze 586 acquisitions of solvent and insolvent U.S. banks between 2009:Q1 and 2016:Q3 and find that acquirers pay higher prices for insolvent banks with more branches or with a national charter. Our findings hence suggest that the franchise value is not only embedded in failed banks’ core deposits but also in the size of their branch networks. Moreover, bidders with more capital tend to pay lower prices for failed banks. Failed banks are sold at higher prices in more competitive auctions. We also compare the financial strength of acquirers of failed banks with the financial strength of acquirers of healthy banks in non-assisted takeovers. The results show that the acquirers in the FDIC-assisted acquisitions have similar tier-1 ratios, but have higher non-performing loans than do the acquirers in non-assisted acquisitions. In more competitive auctions, however, the acquirers have a bigger size (relative to the size of their targets) than the acquirers of solvent targets.