Berkshire Hills Bancorp has closed the acquisition of SI Financial Group and has also merged its subsidiary Savings Institute and Trust Company into Berkshire Bank.
Image: Berkshire Hills wraps up SI Financial Group acquisition. Photo: Courtesy of Capri23auto/Pixabay.
In December 2018, Berkshire Hills signed an agreement to acquire SI Financial Group in an all-stock deal valued at $180m.
For the deal, Berkshire had issued about 5.7 million shares to complete the merger. The total stock value has been valued at about $176m. Including the newly issued shares, Berkshire’s total number of shares about 51.2 million, with a market capitalisation of $1.6bn.
Berkshire Hills Bancorp CEO Richard Marotta said: “We are excited to welcome Savings Institute’s customers, employees and shareholders to the Berkshire family. The Savings Institute team has been receptive and worked cohesively with our teams as we moved towards closing.
“We look forward to continuing our work with our new colleagues as we bring our full suite of products and expanded resources to their markets. Our next steps include completing the integration of Savings Institute following the planned systems conversion in October.”
The deal will increase Berkshire’s market presence with 18 branches in Eastern Connecticut (CT) and five branches in Rhode Island, adding to the bank’s existing nine branches in Connecticut.
The merger has added about $1.7bn in assets and $1.3bn in low cost deposits. Berkshire Hills’ total have now increased to $13.6bn. SI Financial reported $1.3bn in loans and $1.3bn in deposits as of 30 September 2018.
Under the deal terms, each share in SI Financial will be exchanged for 0.48 shares of Berkshire Hills. After the deal is closed, any remaining SI Financial options will be vested and converted into Berkshire Hills options.
The deal is expected to be 5% accretive to earnings per share next year, in the first full year of integrated operations. The core deposit premium is expected to stand at 2.6% and about 30% in cost savings is expected to take place.
With the deal now closed, SI Financial president and CEO Rheo Brouillard will be appointed as one of Berkshire Hill Bancorp’s board of directors. Other business leaders from SI Financial will remain with Berkshire and will continue in their respective roles.