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ASHEBORO — CommunityOne Bank is scrambling to raise the money it needs to operate while rising losses and bad loans push it dangerously close to failure.

The $1.9 billion Asheboro bank, which serves central and northwest North Carolina, has hired two investment firms to recruit investors or lenders willing to take a risk on the company that has lost about $280 million in the past three years.

But its options have narrowed: Investors may buy the bank if they can get a bargain, or federal regulators may close the bank and sell its assets to a stronger bank.

CommunityOne says that federal regulators have imposed deadlines for the bank to get its finances in order.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which enters banks and closes them when they fail, does not announce bank failures in advance.

But the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond already have imposed strict standards on CommunityOne Bank.

And they want the bank to raise more money — capital — to operate.

CommunityOne’s balance sheet is loaded with nearly $400 million in bad assets such as foreclosed houses, repossessed commercial properties and unpaid loans. That’s nearly four times the $111 million in capital and money for loan losses that the bank has on hand.

But the bank is sending strong signals that it may not survive long enough to raise enough money to satisfy regulators.

Failure to reach federal requirements and mounting problems with loans and foreclosed real estate “raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the bank wrote in an annual report filed March 14 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

One way to keep score of the bank’s problems is the “Troubled Asset Ratio,” created by Bank Tracker, a part of the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

CommunityOne hit a score of 396 at the close of the fourth quarter, ending in December. That puts it in the realm of other banks that were closed and sold by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

“The trends don’t look good,” said Wendell Cochran, senior editor of Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Cochran declined to predict the fate of CommunityOne, but his group reports that many banks have recovered substantially during 2010, while this bank continues heading downward.

“Nothing’s going in the right direction for this bank,” Cochran said.

The only other bank to fail in North Carolina so far this year — the much smaller Bank of Asheville — had a ratio of 435, representing $39 million in bad assets and a little more than $9 million in capital plus reserves on hand.

CommunityOne’s depositors are insured up to $250,000 under the FDIC, regardless of what happens.

And the bank is hoping that several strategies will cut costs, raise income, build capital and unload bad investments.

But strict standards from regulators that demand higher capital levels, limit lending ability and impose other guidelines limit the bank’s flexibility to build capital.

Failure to meet those requirements, the bank said, “may result in the sale, merger or liquidation of the Bank and further deterioration of the Bank’s capital may result in its being placed in regulatory receivership.”

The bank’s interim president and CEO, R. Larry Campbell, could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com