The newly formed First Texas BHC Inc. in Fort Worth announced Wednesday that it has a deal to buy the $300 million-asset Southwest Bank in Fort Worth. The price was not disclosed.
The deal is the second First Texas has announced this year. In January it said it would buy the $53 million-asset Community Bank of Texas in Grand Prairie. That deal is expected to close near the end of April. The deal for Southwest is expected to close in the third quarter.
Vernon Bryant, First Texas' chairman and chief executive officer, was CEO of the $1.8 billion-asset TexasBank when it was sold to Compass Bancshares Inc. last April for $464 million. Mr. Bryant left a few months later and began organizing First Texas in November; the bank holding company was approved early this year.
It plans to combine the two banks it expects to buy under the Southwest name. Including $85 million of additional capital it plans to raise, First Texas would have assets of about $420 million when the deals close.
John Shivers, Southwest's chairman and chief executive officer, is to become the vice chairman and a key investor in First Texas. Southwest president Larry Kilgore and Community Bank of Texas president and CEO Richard Barajas would also join First Texas' management team.
The combined bank would have 10 branches by yearend, including three that are to be built.
Mr. Shivers' family bought Southwest in 1975, and the family and the bank's employee stock ownership plan own 97% of its shares.
In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Shivers said he decided to sell now because Fort Worth-area banks are fetching top dollar.
"The market is hotter than a three-dollar pistol down here," he said. "Banks are bringing in all-time high prices, and I was able to work the kind of deal I dreamed about ... . It's probably the highest-priced bank in Fort Worth. It's substantial, or I wouldn't have sold it."
John Blaylock, the associate director of Sheshunoff & Co. Investment Banking in Austin, said that Mr. Bryant picked the right time to form his holding company. In the past two years all of Fort Worth's community banks with more than $1 billion of assets have been sold, he said, so First Texas is well positioned to buy not just other banks but also lenders and customers.
"Anytime there is a shift in the marketplace, it's going to raise concerns among commercial customers," Mr. Blaylock said
