With more bank failures expected in the Pacific Northwest, Umpqua Holdings Corp. in Portland, Ore., announced late Tuesday that it plans to raise $215 million in new equity that could be used to buy failed banks.
The $9.4 billion-asset company also plans to use the cash to repay the $215 million it received from the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program in November 2008.
The new stock will be a mixture of common equity and depositary shares, or fractions of preferred stock.
Last month Umpqua purchased a failed bank, the $485 million-asset Evergreen Bank in Seattle, from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Brett Rabatin, a research analyst with Sterne, Agee & Leach Equity Research, said the additional capital could allow Umpqua to add up to $4 billion to its balance sheet.
It is unclear how the additional capital would affect the company's already high capital ratios. Umpqua reported that at the end of the fourth quarter it had a tangible common equity ratio of 8.27%. Analysts typically consider anything above 6% as healthy for that ratio.
