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Buyers, sellers and shareholders rarely profit from bank acquisitions, the author argues. There are too many things that have to go right in the pricing and integration, and there is too much that can go wrong.
August 8 -
When it agreed to be sold to Stifel last year, KBW was painted as a victim of weak bank M&A and the transformation of investment banking. Things are looking up now as the combined company ranked as the top advisor in four of six U.S. regions at midyear.
September 1 -
The "we are all buyers" mentality held by most of Chicago's large community banks changed when Taylor Capital agreed to sell to MB Financial for $680 million. It could signal the beginning of long-awaited consolidation in the Chicago area.
July 15 -
With the market starting to value banks on their earnings rather than their book values, buyers are looking for deals that will prop up their bottom lines over the long term and are willing to pay more.
August 5
Second of a two-part BankThink series debating whether bank mergers are worthwhile. Previously: former investment banker Harvard Winters argued that there are
Bank mergers are an economic necessity because there are currently more banks than the nation can support, leaving many of them struggling to earn a decent return.
In Chicago alone
Considering bank failures in 2010 cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $24.18 billion, consolidation is a good alternative to another wave of closures!
Banks that are producing inadequate returns are squandering shareholder capital that could be invested more productively elsewhere, and they are increasingly at risk of government seizure. Moreover, because they typically offer poorer products and services than stronger players, these banks are not even doing right by their own customers.
High-performing banks, on the other hand, are by definition generating strong returns for shareholders, supplying the capital our nation's businesses and communities need to prosper, and offering top-notch products and services for consumers. Given increasingly stiff competition for loans and talent, it makes perfect strategic sense for these banks to buy underperforming institutions they know that they can turn around, rather than
Consider the case of the underperforming Heartland Community Bank in Franklin, Ind.,
Horizon paid off the $246 million-asset Heartland's Troubled Asset Relief Program obligations the day the deal was completed. That benefited taxpayers, and it spared shareholders the risk of a dilutive capital raise to repay Tarp followed by anemic returns. It may have even prevented a failure that could have cost the federal insurance fund millions of dollars.
Heartland's customers also benefited, because Horizon was able to offer them larger loans, stronger cash management programs, a greater range of trust and wealth management offerings, and even better rates on certificates of deposits.
Heartland's stock rose 30% the day the merger was announced. Horizon's shares held steady that day and since then have doubled in value. Considering the progress the combined companies have made, shareholders can expect to see even greater gains.
Specifically, in 2011, Horizon reported the largest profit in its 138-year history, including an average return on equity of 11% and return on assets of 0.9%. By mid-2013, almost a year after consummating the deal, Horizon could boast of a stellar 14.7% ROE and 1.3% ROA. And there's still plenty of room for it to grow in Heartland's home base in and around Indianapolis.
This is why the market has rewarded smart buyers, like Wells Fargo (WFC) and U.S. Bancorp (USB) two of the country's most profitable banks. Since 1990, Wells Fargo has purchased a whopping 127 banks and
This is also why poor performance is becoming less and less acceptable to investors. I have to agree with activist shareholder groups such as
Philip Timyan, who ran the former Riggs Partners investment fund,
