CNB Financial Corp., the parent company of FC Bank, announced an agreement to acquire Lake National Bank of Mentor today.
The company agreed to make the acquisition for about $24.75 million, or $22.50 per share in cash.
FC Bank is the second largest bank in Crawford County with two offices at 105 Washington Square and 1605 Marion Road, both in Bucyrus, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
“We are excited to continue expansion of our franchise in Ohio by entering the Mentor market in the greater Cleveland area,” said Joseph B. Bower, Jr., president and chief executive officer of CNB Financial in statement. “We have been targeting Mentor as a logical expansion of our ERIEBANK franchise, following up on our most recent expansion into Ashtabula. Mentor is known for its mid-sized commercial and industrial businesses, which we serve extremely well. We feel the same opportunity exists in the greater Cleveland market as in the greater Columbus market, where we also purchased a smaller institution that will allow us to grow organically.”
The combined company will have over $2.5 billion in assets and 40 full-service offices in central and western Pennsylvania and northern and central Ohio.
Lake National Bank was founded in 2005 by the late Lake County businessman and philanthropist Jerome T. Osborne, Sr., and the bank had about $152.2 million in total assets and $14.1 million in shareholders’ equity as of Sept. 30.
After the acquisition, Lake National Bank will operate as part of the ERIEBANK division of CNB, which has local decision making and oversight throughout Erie, Warren and Crawford counties in Pennsylvania and Ashtabula County in Ohio. Since 2005, the division has grown to nine locations and more than $652 million in total assets. In 2014, the division opened a loan production office in Ashtabula, a neighboring community to Mentor, and is currently constructing a full service location in that market.
It is anticipated that employees at Lake National Bank will be mostly unaffected, and ERIEBANK plans to grow its business origination effort in Lake County following closing and integration of the transaction.
Andrew Meinhold, currently president and chief executive officer of Lake National Bank, will continue with CNB in its ERIEBANK division following closing of the acquisition. Jerome T. Osborne III and Lance F. Osborne will be joining the division’s advisory board as well as Joseph T. Svete, chairman of Lake National Bank, Richard T. Flenner, Jr., vice chairman of Lake National Bank, and Richard J. Kessler, Director of Lake National Bank.
“CNB is the ideal partner for our bank,” Meinhold said in statement. “CNB has a successful community banking model and specializes in serving the small and medium sized businesses that are headquartered in Mentor and our surrounding areas. We take pride in being the only locally-owned bank in our market, and we expect that the ERIEBANK brand, combined with a larger lending limit, products, services and technology of CNB, will further enhance our community banking model and serve our new and existing customers extremely well.”
The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016.
