Credit unions are now the buyer in nearly one in five US bank acquisitions, and boards that once dismissed the idea are asking whether a bank belongs in their own growth plan. The harder questions are whether your credit union is the kind that should buy one, which bank would fit, and how buyers find a willing seller before anyone else does. Part 1 draws on five credit unions that have bought banks, three bankers who sold to them, and the attorneys and accountants who structure these deals.
What does the full paper add?
- The five reasons credit unions buy banks, and how each acquirer in the paper put them to work.
- A frank test of whether your credit union has the size, capital and management depth to be a buyer.
- How to size a target against your own balance sheet, and the capital line advisers will not let you cross.
- The financial checks to run on a bank before the first conversation.
- How buyers find banks that never go to auction, in the words of a CEO who has done it twice.
- Why bank deals avoid the questions that stall credit union mergers, and what sellers weigh instead of price alone.
- The banker's side: three bankers on why they sold to a credit union.
33 pages, with lessons from Advia, Dort Financial, GreenState, Harborstone and Sound credit unions.
