An Invigorated Start: Banking M&A Activity Starts Strong in 2019

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – May 8, 2019 – Integrated Legacy Solutions (ILS), the leading provider of data and image migrations to the financial industry, released its quarterly review of industry merger and acquisition data for the first quarter of 2019. Derived from data provided by the Federal Reserve System, the research quantifies all U.S. bank M&A activity closing in the first quarter of 2019.

2019 banking M&A activity started off the year with strong, active first quarter. The first quarter saw 65 M&A deals close which is a 21% increase from what was announced for the first quarter. 2019’s opening quarter matched 2018’s Q1 exactly (in 65 closed deals) and continued a 7 plus year trend of over 60 deals being closed in the first quarter. The first quarter also saw a slight, 3 deal, increase over 2018’s Q4 which has not happened since 2015. Q1 of 2019’s activity spiked geographically in the middle of the country with 36 of the 65 deals, or 55%, coming from the central region. The largest deal closed of the first quarter was Synovus Financials’ $2.9 billion-dollar acquisition of FCB Financial Holdings. With the merger of FCB, Synovus has now become a top five regional bank by deposits in the Southeast, with approximately $45 billion in assets, $37 billion in deposits, $35 billion in loans.

 

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“Nationwide, the trend continues to move upward in both the number of deals announced and

the size of the deals. It’s interesting to correlate the banking M&A trends with the nation’s

economic and growth trends for population and small business.” Said Kris Bishop, President

and CEO of Integrated Legacy Solutions.