Taylor Capital in Chicago to Raise $100M for Expansion

Taylor Capital Group (TAYC) plans to raise $100 million in preferred equity to expand its national business lines and its Chicago bank.

The proceeds would be used to expand Taylor’s national mortgage, business-capital and equipment-finance lines of business, the $5.1 billion-asset company said in a prospectus filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Taylor is counting on those businesses to drive earnings in the ultra-competitive commercial banking market in Chicago. Taylor could also use the proceeds to expand the bank through bank or branch acquisitions, the prospectus says.

The capital raise is the third in greater Chicago announced in the last two weeks. Also on Wednesday, Community Financial Shares in Glen Ellyn announced a $24 million private placement. Last week Standard Bancshares in Hickory Hills said it was set to receive $130 million from a group of private-equity investors.

All three companies said that the proceeds could be used for growth.

Taylor’s Cole Taylor Bank unit has nine branches in Chicago, and management has often talked about expanding that network. Taylor had to work through credit issues after the financial crisis but has experienced a breakthrough in the last 12 months. It began a string of five profitable quarters in the third quarter of 2011 and reclaimed its $73.2 million deferred tax asset in the fourth quarter last year.

Mark Hoppe, the president and chief executive, said Taylor was devising a plan to add branches during its second-quarter conference call this year.

“We could strategically add somewhere between five and 10 or 15” branches, Hoppe said at the time. “They would have to be in the right places. But we have a plan that we are trying to execute to, and there are a variety of different ways I think we could fulfill that.”

Taylor needs to add more organic deposits to its mix, says Brian Martin, an analyst with Fig Partners. Thirty-six percent of its deposits were demand deposits at Sept. 30, which is higher than many of its midsize peers in Chicago. But it benefited heavily from a relationship with Higher One, an organization that provides electronic financial-aid disbursements and payment services.

“They’ve done a great job at growing these national businesses, but it is on the right side of the balance sheet where they don’t stack up,” Martin says. “I think [the raise] is positioning them to get that organic piece in place.”

The proceeds could also be to redeem capital instruments, the prospectus says. Taylor issued the Treasury Department $105 million of preferred stock through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, butthe Treasury auctioned its stake in Taylor in June. Hoppe said at the time that the company would likely wait until right before the Tarp dividend jumps from 5% to 9% in February 2014 to repay that investment.