US-based financial holding company CIT Group has completed the acquisition of IMB Holdco, the parent company of the California-based OneWest Bank, for $3.4bn.
The company completed the previously announced acquisition after receiving all the required regulatory approvals.
As part of the acquisition, CIT Bank merged with the OneWest Bank which will now have assets worth $65bn and over $30bn in deposits.
The deal saw CIT Bank merging with and into OneWest Bank and was renamed CIT Bank, NA that operates an Internet banking franchise along with 70 retail branches across Southern California as OneWest Bank, a division of CIT Bank.
CIT Group CEO and chairman John Thain said: "The completion of this transaction advances our strategic efforts to build a leading commercial banking franchise.
"Through the combination of our national lending and leasing platform with OneWest’s wholesale lending and branch banking franchise, we’ve created a differentiated provider of banking services for small and middle market businesses."
Under the transaction, shareholders of IMB Holdco received cash worth around $1.867bn and approximately 30.9 million shares of CIT along with 168,000 restricted stock units of CIT.
Thain was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that this is the first systemically important financial institution (SIFI) to have been created in the country since the 2008 financial crisis which will require the bank to face strict regulatory requirements like undergoing annual stress tests.
Image: The new entity will have assets worth $65bn. Photo: courtesy of adamr/ freedigitalphotos.net.