Sterling Bancshares Inc. in Houston said it has a deal to buy the $186 million-asset Partners Bank of Texas for $52 million in cash and stock.
The three-year-old Partners has its headquarters in Humble, a northeast suburb of Houston. The $4.1 billion-asset Sterling Bank has 26 branches in the Houston area, but only one is in the northeast region.
The deal "enables us to fill out our footprint in the rapidly growing northeast Houston area and allows us to add some very talented relationship bankers who are experts in the Houston market," J. Downey Bridgwater, Sterling Bancshares' chairman, president, and chief executive, said Thursday in a press release.
Partners' management team would be retained. The bank, which has three branches, would be merged into Sterling Bank.
The deal, the first announced this year for a Texas bank, is valued at 3.32 times Partners' tangible book value and 29.3 times its earnings. The deal is expected to close by the end of the second quarter.
Dan Bass, managing director of Carson Medlin Co. Investment Bankers in Houston, advised Partners on the deal.
Mr. Bass said Partners was not planning to sell, "but when someone offers you 3.3 times book, and you can continue to do what you were doing, it is your fiduciary responsibility to look at the offer."
