Short Takes: Maine's Peoples Makes 2d Agency Deal of Aug.

Peoples Heritage Financial Group, Portland, Maine, is expanding its insurance efforts to New Hampshire.

The $9.8 billion-asset banking company announced Tuesday that it plans to acquire A.D. Davis Inc., a North Conway, N.H.-based property and casualty insurance agency. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close by the end of October.

It is the second New England expansion this month for Peoples' insurance business. On Aug. 18 the bank announced it would enter the field in Massachusetts by acquiring Catalano Insurance Agency, a property and casualty agency in Methuen. That deal is to close by Sept. 30.

Each agency generated about $21 million in premiums and $2 million in gross commissions last year, said Brian Arsenault, a Peoples spokesman. The agencies in Massachusetts and New Hampshire are to become part of Morse, Payson & Noyes Insurance, a Portland-based agency that Peoples acquired last October.

Morse is generating about $120 million in annual premiums and has added $6 million to the bank's noninterest fee income so far this year, Mr. Arsenault said.

He said that the purchase of A.D. Davis, located in the heart of the White Mountains, a ski resort area, was the first in what may be a string of agency acquisitions across New Hampshire. Davis, like Catalano, will retain its name. No changes are planned in its 45-person staff, according to the bank.

- Michael O'D. Moore