Need for speed: Faster deal timelines may spur more bank M&A

The last time that Columbia Banking Systems made an acquisition, it took 17 months for the transaction to close. So it was quite a turnaround when the Tacoma, Washington-based bank said this month that its latest deal is scheduled to close on or around Aug. 31, just over four months after it was announced.

Columbia's experience is far from an anomaly this year, as bank merger-and-acquisition deals speed to the finish line due to faster regulatory approvals under the Trump administration.

Numerous banks have closed their recent M&A transactions either earlier than projected or very early in the target window originally laid out, according to an analysis by American Banker.

Cadence Bank in Tupelo, Mississippi, has announced and closed two deals ahead of schedule this year — the acquisition of FCB Financial in Savannah, Georgia, which was completed 102 days after it was first announced, and the purchase of the troubled Industry Bancshares in Industry, Texas, which was finalized even faster, about 66 days after it was announced.

Last October, Atlantic Union Bankshares announced plans to buy Sandy Spring Bancorp in Olney, Maryland, and it thought the purchase would close a year later. Instead, the Richmond, Virginia-based buyer had regulatory approvals in hand by February and closed the transaction in April.

In March 2025, FB Financial in Nashville said it would buy Southern States Bancshares in Anniston, Alabama, with an expected closing date sometime in the third quarter. The deal was finalized on July 1, the earliest possible closing date in the third quarter.

Industry observers say that big changes at bank regulatory agencies explain the accelerated closing dates. During the Biden administration, the timeline to close bank M&A deals was elongated in several instances, as regulators ramped up their scrutiny of transactions. 

For example, Columbia's acquisition of Umpqua Holdings, announced in the fall of 2021, was initially expected to close in mid-2022, but it didn't cross the finish line until early 2023.  

By contrast, when Columbia announced its deal for Pacific Premier Bancorp in April 2025, it projected a closing date in the second half of the year, and it's now expected to hit the front part of that range.

"I think you have an administration that's comfortable with M&A and pro-M&A, versus taking forever to close," Catherine Mealor, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, told American Banker. "The regulatory process is just a lot more accommodating to banks today."

Bank M&A is a hot topic in 2025. After years of muted activity, which was partly attributed to rising interest rates, the number of announcements is picking up. As of July 31, 101 deals had been announced versus 126 for all of 2024, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. 

This year's list includes the largest tie-up since 2021, the proposed $7.9 billion merger of Synovus Financial in Columbus, Georgia, and Pinnacle Financial Partners in Nashville. That transaction, which was announced in July, is expected to close during the first quarter of next year.

The combined value of deals is also increasing. Year to date, it's $21.6 billion, surpassing the full-year 2024 deal value of $16.4 billion and far exceeding the full-year 2023 deal value of $4.1 billion, according to a research note by Laurie Havener Hunsicker, an analyst at Seaport Research.

The potential for expedited closing times is playing a role in heightened deal activity. The average time to finalize an M&A transaction this year is 193 days, down from 203 last year, according to a midyear industry outlook report published last month by consulting firm Ankura. 

One factor in the quicker closings, according to the report, is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s decision in February to supersede a Biden-era rule that resulted in greater scrutiny of bank mergers.

Congress also voted in May to nullify the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's 2024 bank merger guidance, which would have eliminated expedited reviews of deals. That rollback was finalized by President Trump this summer. And last week, in another example of M&A skepticism being rolled back, Trump revoked a Biden-era executive order that called for more scrutiny of mergers, including in the banking sector.

Trump-era regulators seem to have a meaningfully different approach to bank M&A, according to Stephen Scouten, an analyst at Piper Sandler. Instead of looking at what may go wrong in any given transaction, they seem to be focusing on what will go right, he said.

"I think the whole mindset is different, and the fruit of that is you're seeing these deals get approved more and more quickly," Scouten said.

Scouten said he has even heard from bank management teams that regulators have called them after approving an acquisition to ask how smoothly they had handled the process, like a customer service representative might.

There are benefits for banks that can wrap up their mergers sooner. For starters, shorter approval windows mean lower transaction costs, which results in more capital in the banks, according to Carl Goss, an attorney at Hunton Andrews Kurth who used to work at the OCC. In addition, closing deals reduces uncertainty, so banks can better set business expectations. The faster banks can start integrating, the sooner they see the benefits of scale, he added.

Faster approval times may ultimately translate into more M&A activity, according to Goss and KBW's Mealor.

"It kind of has a snowball effect, and it also facilitates regulators being able to consider more deals because they're spending a little bit less time on each deal," Goss said. 

While banks may previously have taken more time to line up potential merger partners, there may now be a new sense of urgency in order to stay ahead of competitors, Mealor said.

Earlier this year, Seacoast Banking Corp. announced two acquisitions within three months of each other — a strategy that hasn't been used in recent years as the pace of regulatory approval made such moves riskier. 

In February, Florida-based Seacoast announced it would acquire Heartland National Bank in a move to expand its presence in the Sunshine State. The deal crossed the finish line on July 11, with the sub-five-month timeline landing on the early side of Seacoast's expectation for a third-quarter close.

In May, Seacoast said it would also buy Villages Bancorp. in Central Florida, in a transaction slated to close in the fourth quarter.

On Tuesday, another overlapping deal was announced. Just two weeks before a previously announced acquisition by TowneBank was expected to close, the Virginia-based bank unveiled plans to acquire Dogwood State Bank in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Banks in the middle of deals "aren't off the table for as long" as they may have been previously, Mealor said. "And that's making all the acquirers realize they have to be on target, talking to the top targets, because competitors aren't going to be on the sidelines for as long as they were before."

Still, merger timelines may not keep gaining speed, Goss said. While he thinks the new administration is more merger-friendly, he noted that the additional M&A activity absorbs more attention from regulators.

"I think a countervailing factor there is that the regulators have experienced a lot of turnover and retirements and people leaving," Goss said. "So that is something that could lead to extensions of timelines, if you couple that with just more applications in general."