After several months of negotiations, PBOC Holdings of Los Angeles has struck a deal to buy BYL Bancorp in Yorba Linda, Calif., for $39 million in cash.
BYL, the holding company of $322 million-asset Bank of Yorba Linda, revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in August that it had begun talks with $3.3 billion-asset PBOC, the holding company for Peoples Bank of California. When they learned of the discussions, a number of BYL shareholders urged management to complete the sale.
The combined company would have $3.6 billion of assets and 31 branches. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2001.
Though PBOC is chartered as a savings bank, it is reconfiguring its balance sheet to make it more like that of a commercial bank. Acquiring BYL would further this effort, said Rudolf P. Guenzel, president and chief executive officer of PBOC Holdings.
