Rurban Financial Corp. in Defiance, Ohio, has taken a big step toward its goal of having $1 billion of assets within two years with an agreement to buy NBM Bancorp Inc. in Montpelier, Ohio, for $25 million in cash.
The deal, announced Friday, would be the first acquisition in three years for the $571 million-asset Rurban but probably would not be its last in northwest Ohio. Its president and chief executive officer, Kenneth A. Joyce, told American Banker earlier this month that it was looking to acquire several banks in the region and would target those assets of $75 million to $200 million.
The privately held NBM has $109 million of assets. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, at which point the five branches of NBM's National Bank of Montpelier subsidiary would be merged into Rurban's State Bank and Trust Co.
The acquisition would give Rurban 22 branches in all and take it into Williams County.
Alan Fiser, NBM's president and chief executive, said the system conversion is expected be easy because NBM's data processing is already managed by Rurban's data processing subsidiary, Rurbanc Data Services Inc. The deal price works out to $113.98 a share, or 1.35 times to NBM's book value as of March 31. — Robert Barba
