Bradford Bancorp Inc.'s deal to buy another Maryland thrift is officially off.
Four weeks after Bradford, a Baltimore thrift company, revealed that it was having trouble raising the capital to fund its purchase of Patapsco Bancorp Inc. in Dundalk, the companies announced late Thursday that they had mutually agreed to terminate the deal and that Bradford would pay Patapsco a $2 million breakup fee.
The $578 million-asset Bradford announced in March that it would buy Patapsco for $45.5 million in cash and stock and that it would go public to pay for the deal.
Bradford, however, was forced to cancel its stock offering in the face of weak investor demand, and it said in early December that it would be unable to close the deal unless Patapsco agreed to a "significantly" lower price.
In a press release Thursday, Patapsco chairman Thomas P. O'Neill said, "after extensive review, we concluded that the revised proposal submitted by Bradford was not sufficient to compensate our stockholders."
Patapsco has $257 million of assets. In late trading Friday its shares were down 3.6% from Thursday's closing price, at $13.50.
