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First Niagara Financial Group's (FNFG) first-quarter profit rose, as the bank boosted its commercial lending and picked up more checking account customers.
April 19 -
The OCC's approval clears First Niagara to close its deal for 195 branches in New York and Connecticut by May 18, CEO John Koelmel says.
April 9 -
First Niagara Financial Group CEO John Koelmel discusses his deal to sell 37 branches in New York to KeyCorp, his plans to sell more branches and his argument that its bigger deal with HSBC will pay off.
January 13 -
First Niagara Financial Group Inc. Buffalo announced a series of moves after the stock market closed Tuesday aimed at raising the capital it needs to complete its acquisition of 195 upstate New York branches from rival HSBC Bank USA.
December 6 -
First Niagara has to solve the riddle of how to pay for HSBC's branches in New York and Connecticut without hurting shareholders, selling off too many assets or mistiming the helter-skelter stock markets.
November 11
More than 100 former HSBC Bank branches across upstate New York and Connecticut are now operating as branches of First Niagara Bank.
First Niagara's parent, First Niagara Financial Group (FNFG) in Buffalo, announced Monday that its conversion of the recently acquired branches was completed over the weekend.
With the deal, First Niagara gained $9.8 billion of deposits, $1.6 billion of performing loans and more than 1,200 new employees. The bank has nearly quadrupled its assets through a series of deals in recent years and now has about $38 billion of assets and roughly 430 branches in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
"I am incredibly proud of the work our entire team did to prepare for and then complete a very smooth transition over the weekend," John R. Koelmel, First Niagara's president and chief executive, said in a news release. "This is an unprecedented accomplishment, with everyone working around the clock to make it happen."
HSBC has sold off its retail branch network as part of a broad strategy of focusing on corporate and high-net-worth retail customers in major metropolitan markets.
First Niagara acquired a total of 195 branches from HSBC for about $1 billion but it could not keep all of them due to anti-trust concerns, and because many are in markets in which First Niagara already operates. The company has sold dozens of the acquired branches to several competitors, including KeyCorp.
