Synovus Financial Corp., whose president and chief executive, Richard Anthony, told investors this summer that it was interested in becoming more acquisitive, announced its second acquisition in as many months Monday.
The Columbus, Ga., banking company said it would acquire the $342 million-asset First Florida Bank in Naples in a stock transaction valued at $87 million, based on the Friday closing price of Synovus' stock.
Frederick L. Green 3d, a vice chairman of the $27 billion-asset Synovus, said in an interview Monday that it can make more acquisitions and is interested in companies in the states where it already operates.
Synovus has "the greatest opportunity" in Florida, where it already has branches in cities such as Tampa and Tallahassee, he said. It entered Jacksonville in the past year through a branch-building effort after determining that it was too expensive to buy a bank there.
Doing deals in Florida may get easier, because prices for community banks there are slowly inching down, Mr. Green said.
"The potential sellers are not demanding quite the multiples that they had been looking for a year and a half ago. The expectations aren't as rich," he said.
Anthony Davis, an analyst at BankAtlantic Bancorp Inc.'s Ryan Beck & Co. Inc., said that "realism is setting in" at some community banks in Florida. But he also said that for now most would-be acquirers believe that prices could slide further heading into next year, so they are content to "sit back and wait" for some targets.
"Anybody who wants to build a franchise down there has to be patient," Mr. Davis said. He noted that Synovus, which specializes in buying small banks, could make deals in Tampa and Jacksonville, or it could look outside Florida for acquisitions in Chattanooga, Tenn., Nashville, or Atlanta.
On Sept. 6, Synovus said it would acquire Riverside Bank of Marietta, Ga., for $169 million; the deal was its first since June of last year and its first under Mr. Anthony, who succeeded James. H. Blanchard as the chief executive in July. That deal is set to close this quarter. The $650 million-asset Riverside would become part of Synovus' Bank of North Georgia.
After the Riverside deal was announced, Mr. Anthony had said that Synovus could become more acquisitive. "Acquisitions do energize an organization, and they help us bring in talent," he said at that time. "The feeling that our management team had was that the time was right to be a little more proactive than we had been."
A spokesman said that Mr. Anthony was unavailable for comment on Monday.
Mr. Green also said that Synovus is seeing areas where it can improve the production at the banks it acquires, and that it plans to introduce wealth management and cash management services at First Florida. He expects the three-branch bank, which would become Synovus' 40th separately chartered bank, to grow to $1 billion of assets in the next four to five years.
The acquisition for the privately owned First Florida should close in the first or second quarter, Synovus said.
