McGlinchey in the News
Why Alabama could see a rebound in bank M&A activity this year
Read Time: 1 minBirmingham Member Chris Couch is quoted in an article discussing potential merger and acquisition activity for Alabama banks in the Feb. 4, 2021 issue of the Birmingham Business Journal.
But Couch said he thinks Alabama will see more intrastate deals rather than banks entering the Alabama market or Alabama banks expanding to other states.
He said the good acquisition targets in metro areas of the state have been realized. And the majority of banks in the state are under $1 billion, so their ability to acquire out of state is limited. But he said he thinks there is an opportunity for smaller Alabama community banks to merge and scale up before trying to acquire any banks out of state.
“On the buyer side it’s a little more challenging. There’s been contraction in Huntsville; Birmingham is still pretty heavily banked; Montgomery is soft; Mobile is softening,” he said. “It’s hard for me to understand exactly why folks would be coming into Alabama heavily unless they had a fairly specific strategy. So I think what we’re going to see is intrastate consolidation for folks looking to make sense of technology that they’ve invested in that they want to expand or deploy across a broader footprint.”
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