Norwest Corp., which has been piecing together a Texas franchise with multiple acquisitions, said it had agreed to buy a $450 million-asset banking company in San Antonio.
Buying Benson Financial Corp. would make the $71 billion-asset Minneapolis company third in deposit share in the attractive San Antonio market, said Benson President Tom Roddy. The stock deal, announced last week, is valued at about $78 million.
Norwest agreed to trade $20 worth of its shares for each of Benson's 3.9 million shares, said Mr. Roddy, who will remain president of the San Antonio bank.
Benson, a conglomeration of once-troubled banks, is 34% owned by Texas businessman Tom Benson. The company held an initial public stock offering that raised $20 million in September 1994.
Benson is the holding company for Groos Bank and Kelly Field National Bank. Mr. Roddy said Groos, founded in 1854, is the oldest bank in Texas. Kelly Field is a bank specializing in serving military officers.
Once Norwest completes the acquisition of Benson and two other deals pending - for $1.9 billion-asset Victoria Bancshares and $150 million Henrietta Bancshares - it will have about $7.5 billion in Texas assets. That compares with the $2.6 billion it had in the state at the end of 1994, said Ben Crabtree, an analyst with Dain Bosworth.
Piece by piece, Norwest has assembled a strong presence in Texas, agreeing to 15 acquisitions in the state in the last two years, while intentionally avoiding heavily concentrated markets such as Dallas and Houston, Mr. Crabtree said.
"This gives Norwest a pretty strong presence in San Antonio," he added. "Texas is going to become the second-biggest state in the Norwest system," behind Minnesota.
