What about bank mergers?

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That’s what every expert, interested party and casual follower will tell you about bank mergers just from sheer colloquial knowledge of the banking atmosphere. They all say more are coming.

Now we know that from the source.

A new survey of 260 senior executives and directors of banks across the country showed more than half of them intend to acquire a healthy bank in the next 12 months, and 67 percent said their banks need to grow to survive.

So if you were hoping to catch your breath from all those recent bank mergers, it doesn’t look like you’ll have that chance.

The recent survey from the publication Bank Director wasn’t as much eye opening as it was confirmation of what everyone in the banking community already mostly knew: Bank mergers aren’t going away.

Kinda like Bob Wiley.

Keep sailing, Bob. And yes, you’re now my official mascot of local bank mergers.

There are 15 banks based in the midstate region of Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Perry and York counties. They’re the ones I’d consider our “local” banks. Just extrapolating the numbers from the Bank Director survey, seven or eight of them are going to try to make some kind of move in the next 12 months.

That’s not saying they’ll all disappear, since the biggest of those 15 banks — such as Fulton, PeoplesBank, ACNB or Mid Penn — likely have the capital to stay independent and maybe make a buy of their own. Ephrata National, also in that group, went so far as to hit Facebook last week to say it definitely is not for sale.

And if anything, other than Fulton, we have a number of banks that hover right around the $1 billion in assets benchmark that aren’t very attractive to the larger banks around here willing to deal.

It’s those small one-, or two- or three-branch banks that likely will be the acquisition targets of the banks around $1 billion looking to build scale. Mansfield-based First Citizens Community Bank, which likely will close on its acquisition of First National Bank of Fredericksburg by the end of the year, has said its next move could be to fill in the space between its footprint in Williamsport and its new buy in Lebanon County. Maybe the smaller banks in the northern section of the midstate — Bank of Landisburg, Liverpool Community Bank, etc. — could be attractive targets.

The really interesting moves could come from among some of the second tier of our local banks, between $300 million and $600 million in assets, such as Jonestown Bank and Trust, Riverview, Centric or York Traditions. They could go any of three ways. They could buy one of those smaller banks to expand their footprint and add at least some scale, be bought out with a Godfather-type offer, or stay the course and stay independent.

The longer they stick with the third option, however, the more they could get pushed to one of the other two options as shareholders or investors get itchy with status quo.

Riverview has shown it’s not averse to going outside its footprint to add scale, so maybe that’s where some of these other banks will look as well since there isn’t much to buy locally.

Either way, if those survey results can be believed, it’s going to be an interesting 12 months. And I’ll have Bob Wiley quotes to spew all throughout it, so we got that going for us. Which is nice.

Oops! Wrong Bill Murray role!



Maybe we’ll just go ahead and make Bill Murray the official mascot. Next week, the Dodd-Frank Act as explained by Pete Venkman!



Or a yield on earning assets discussion from Herman Blume!