Home Bancshares in Ark. Actively Bidding on Three Banks

Home Bancshares in Conway, Ark., has bids out to buy three banks that, if successful, would add $2 billion in assets.

The $7.5 billion-asset company is an aggressive acquirer that recently agreed to buy the Florida operations of Doral Bank, along with a national property finance business that once belonged to the failed Puerto Rican bank.

Still, John W. Allison, Home's chairman, is showing no signs of slowing down, telling analysts during a conference call Thursday about a handful of deals his team is currently working on.

"It will be traditional M&A," Allison said of the three bids. "Will we get them? I don't know. We probably weren't the highest bidder in the pack, but we certainly are the best bidder in the pack. So we'll see how that shakes out."

Allison also told analysts that Home has been working on a "real complicated transaction" that "got even more complicated" in the last two weeks.

Though Home is planning to enter New York with the property finance deal - hiring the team that built the loan portfolio it is buying - Allison said most of his company's deals going forward are likely to be in its home turf of Arkansas and Florida.

Allison noted that Bank of the Ozarks, another Arkansas company that recently entered New York, also has operations in Atlanta and Los Angeles, before quickly shooting down the notion that Home would do the same.

"We don't have anything in there, and we probably aren't going to," Allison said of Atlanta and Los Angeles. "So New York will probably be where we'll hang out."