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Arvest Bank, the nation's third-largest privately held bank, agreed to buy 29 branches from Bank of America (BAC).
December 17 -
Cambridge Savings Bank joins forces with a theater ensemble to find new ways to get financial education messages across to young children.
January 26 -
Walgreens has transformed a historic Chicago building that housed two failed banks into a glamorous drugstore.
November 29
The first time Arvest Bank was believed to be putting its name on a Kansas City landmark, the rumors turned out to be false. The second time around, it's a done deal.
Arvest has acquired the naming rights to the historic Midland Theatre in downtown Kansas City. Cordish Co., a real estate development firm, renovated the Midland in 2008 after it had been under-utilized for several years. The theater is part of a broader redevelopment of the Power and Light District of Kansas City. Financial terms of the naming-rights deal were not disclosed.
(To see more posts on American Banker's People blog,
At one time the rumors that the $14 billion-asset Arvest Bank had bought the naming rights to the Kansas City Royals' baseball stadium had become so widespread, that the stadium's Wikipedia page had changed the facility's name to Arvest Bank Stadium from Kauffman Stadium.
But Arvest Bank was too new to the Kansas City market at that time to take on such a high-profile marketing venture, says Mark Larrabee, Arvest's chief in Kansas City. The re-christening of the Midland Theater is the Fayetteville, Ark., bank's first naming-rights deal in Kansas City, Larrabee says.
Arvest entered the Kansas City market in 2009 with its acquisition of Harrington Bank, where Larrabee previously worked. Arvest has since made three additional acquisitions in Kansas City.
