A proposed merger between Visterra Credit Union in Moreno Valley, Calif., and the Credit Union of Southern California in Brea has been called off.
The two credit unions, both founded in the 1950s, had announced plans in April for a merger that would have created an institution with more than $1 billion of assets, 11 branches, 86,000 members, and 260 employees. Visterra was to be the surviving credit union and Credit Union of SoCal's president and chief executive, Dave Gunderson, was to become its CEO.
They decided to terminate the deal several weeks ago, according to a local newspaper report, because they had determined it would not have delivered the efficiencies they had envisioned.
In an interview last week with the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., Visterra president and chief executive officer Robert Cameron said, "The farther we got into it, the more we found that we were not going to meet the economy of scale we wanted to reach. That was one of the up-front additions [both institutions] wanted to have."
They could resume talks "in [a] year or two," Mr. Cameron added, but the merger "didn't make sense now."
