First Busey's new acquisition, Stax founders launch credit-scoring tool

April 5, 2024 3:03 PM

First Busey closes acquisition of Merchants and Manufacturers Bank; Stax co-founders launch a new credit-scoring tool; UMB's marketing chief takes on consumer banking; and more in the weekly banking news roundup.

First Busey closes acquisition of Merchants and Manufacturers Bank in Illinois

First Busey in Champaign, Illinois, said it completed its cash-and-stock acquisition of in-state peer Merchants and Manufacturers Bank Corp. The deal was announced in November and closed on schedule on April 1.

The $12.3 billion-asset parent of Busey Bank said the buyout of the $500 million-asset M&M Bank in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, would bolster its suburban Chicago footprint and help build out its commercial banking customer base and wealth management capabilities. M&M had five Illinois branches, including three in Joliet, one in Channahon and one in its hometown.

The combined franchise now has 62 branches, including 21 in central Illinois, 17 in suburban Chicago, 20 in the St. Louis metropolitan area, one in Indianapolis and three in southwest Florida. It has $8.1 billion of loans, $10.7 billion of deposits and $12.1 billion of wealth assets under its oversight. — Jim Dobbs

Financial Institutions in New York sells its insurance business

Financial Institutions, the parent company of Five Star Bank in western New York, is the latest U.S. bank holding company to sell its insurance subsidiary. The Warsaw, New York-based company announced this week in a press release that it sold SDN Insurance Agency to NFP Property & Casualty Services for $27 million in cash. The divestiture is part of a string of similar sales, largely driven by the promise of big payouts. In February, Truist Financial sold its remaining stake in its insurance business. Last year, Eastern Bankshares, Cadence Bank, Evans Bancorp and CB Financial all fetched premium prices for their insurance subsidiary sales. Financial Institutions' deal, which was completed April 1, comes about 10 years after the company acquired the agency then known as Scott Danahy Naylon, as a means to generate more fee income. It then expanded the business, partly by completing two insurance-related acquisitions. In 2023, the business generated about $6.7 million of revenue, up from $6.4 million the prior year, according to Financial Institutions' fourth-quarter earnings report. — Allissa Kline

Payments fintech founders launch small-business credit-scoring tool

The founders of Stax Payments (formerly Fattmerchant) are teaming with Equifax to power Worth AI, a new credit underwriting and risk-management platform designed to help banks and credit unions measure the creditworthiness of small and midsize businesses, according to a press release. Worth AI uses various types of AI to augment its data about small businesses' credit profiles, using differentiated data from Equifax, including details about business owners and other key attributes of millions of U.S. businesses. The process generates a "worth score" reflecting a small business's current health, based on historical data. Worth AI launched its services last month in Orlando, led by Stax co-founders Sal Rehmetullah and Suneera Madhani, who stepped away last year from the firm they founded in 2014 to form the new venture. —Kate Fitzgerald

UMB Financial’s marketing chief takes on consumer banking role

UMB Financial in Kansas City, Missouri, has expanded the responsibilities of Liz Lewis, chief marketing officer, to include consumer banking oversight. Lewis, who will retain her current role, will now also serve as president of consumer banking, the company said in a press release. Lewis will be in charge of retail banking, private banking and mortgage banking, as well as marketing, communication and sales support, UMB said. Lewis, who joined UMB in May 2023, previously worked at CommunityAmerica Credit Union, Commerce Bancshares and BMO, according to her LinkedIn profile. — Allissa Kline

JPMorgan China Securities chairman quits in another reshuffle

JPMorgan Chase is making more senior leadership changes in China, with Park Pu stepping down as chairman of its onshore securities business, people familiar with the matter said.

Pu, who is based in Shanghai, is the second top leader to leave the U.S. bank's operations in the country this year. He has been with the firm for close to a decade and oversaw the build-out of JPMorgan's investment bank and securities business in mainland China over the past seven years.

He will be replaced by Lu Fang, a former official at China's securities regulator who was appointed chief executive officer of JPMorgan Securities (China) in 2022.

Its changing of the guard in China comes as the world's second-largest economy is grappling with a growth slowdown, a deep housing downturn,and a slump in capital-markets fund-raising activities. —Cathy Chan, Bloomberg News

Rothschild dealmaker Steven Berger leaves for Raymond James

Rothschild Managing Director Steven Berger has left the firm to join Raymond James Financial, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

New York-based Berger, who will serve a period of gardening leave, will report to John Roddy, the bank's head of financial services investment banking, said one of the people, all of whom requested anonymity as the move is not yet public.

Berger, an asset management banker, has worked at Rothschild since 2019. Prior to that, he spent about nine years at Credit Suisse, his LinkedIn profile shows.

Representatives for Rothschild and Raymond James declined to comment.

At Rothschild, Berger advised on transactions including Varagon Capital Partners's sale of a controlling stake to Man Group Plc, CarVal's sale to AllianceBernstein, Abrdn's sale of its U.S. private markets business to HighVista Strategies and Abrdn's sale of its European private equity business to Patria Investments. — Gillian Tan, Bloomberg News