NewAlliance sold

[MadVlad]

Looks like NewAlliance bank, Connecticut's third largest State-headquartered bank, will be sold to a Buffalo Company, First Niagara. Buffalo 1, New Haven 0

[The Voice of Reason]

i follow banking pretty closely. I posted this in the economic dev thread, but will add more here now.

This is definately a bad for CT. we were lucky to have the 3 largest independent banks in New England to be based in CT.

FNFG is a dynamo in terms of buying and integrating banks in a healthy way. just 3-5 years ago FNFG was something simular to Liberty bank, and now they are a $29 billion super regional!

recently they bought the branches that the FDIC made PNC bank sell in 2008 associated with their merger with national city. these branches made FNFG a player in the Pittsburgh area. in fact it made them the 3rd biggest bank there.

then FNFG went and bought Harlysville bank in the philly area, and all of a sudden FNFG went from just a New York bank with 12 billion in assets to a NY and PENN bank with 20 billion, now they are near 30, and are bigger than PBCT.

NAL, pbct, and webster bank the bigger players are all concidering growing in MA near boston, but PBCT was also rumored to buy FNFG. now thats clearly not going to happen.

so now, PBCT just lost a great growth opportunity, and NAL is not going to grow in the boston area and add to the company HQ in New haven. so, the thing is we lost out on some real potential growth, but we also lost out on the chance of PBCT growing ideally as well.

now PBCT will still grow, that will happen, but losing one of the 3 is a major blow. we may end up loosing WBS to a buyout too, ya never know. its a great bargain right now.

and FNFG just moved to buffalo from a smaller town near by, so FNFG scored by by getting that HQ