In Brief: FirstMerit to Reissue 1.2M Shares for Deal

FirstMerit Corp. announced Tuesday that it will offer 1.2 million common shares to enable it to account for its planned merger with Security First Corp. as a pooling of interests.

Analysts said the company was reissuing shares that it had repurchased as a part of a buyback program.

The reissue may hurt FirstMerit's earnings in a minor way, said Kenneth Pugilisi, an analyst at Sandler O'Neill & Partners, but should not be "material."

The offering is being underwritten by McDonald & Co.

FirstMerit, which has $6.2 billion of assets, has been busy making deals to buy other companies lately. On Aug. 11 it agreed to buy Signal Corp.

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