Hope Bancorp closes drawn-out deal to buy Hawaii bank

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Hope Bancorp closed its acquisition of Territorial Bancorp in Honolulu on Wednesday, culminating a lengthy and at times controversial deal process.

When the Los Angeles-based Hope announced the all-stock deal in April 2024, it had expected to close it by the end of the year. But its $78.6 million offer was challenged by a competing bid from an investor group led by Blue Hill Advisors and former Bank of Hawaii CEO Allan Landon. The Blue Hill-led group initially made a cash bid in August that valued Territorial at $12 per share and then upped that offer to $12.50 per share, about 50% more than Hope's estimated price tag.

"We think our offer is clearly superior," Landon told American Banker last fall.

Territorial's board of directors ultimately rejected the competing offer, saying it was "inferior" to Hope's because it presented a range of uncertainties. These included a lack of evidence that the competing offer would get prompt regulatory approval. Territorial noted it would have to pay Hope a $3 million termination fee to pursue the investor group's offer, and it said the deal with Hope also prevented it from considering competing offers that were not clearly superior.

Ultimately, Territorial's shareholders voted in favor of the sale to Hope in November, with more than 5 million votes cast for the deal versus 1.9 million against it. Regulators approved the transaction in March.

"We are excited to have completed this combination and to officially welcome Territorial customers and team members to the Bank of Hope family," Kevin Kim, Hope's chairman and CEO, said in a statement Wednesday.

With the acquisition, Hope gains about $2 billion of assets and entrance to Hawaii. It now is a $19 billion-asset bank with about 80 branches in nine states. About 30 of those branches are in Hawaii. Hope has traditionally focused on Korean-American communities.

"We believe this combination will strengthen our position as one of the leading Asian-American banks in the country, add a stable, low-cost deposit base to the combined company, and accelerate the diversification of our loan mix with the addition of a residential mortgage portfolio with excellent asset quality," Kim said in a statement last month after securing regulators' go-ahead.

"We look forward to building on Territorial's legacy of exemplary customer service and support of local communities in a strategically important market," he said.

Hope said in Wednesday's release that the former Territorial Savings Bank now operates under the trade name Territorial Savings, a division of Bank of Hope. Hope kept the name to preserve "the 100-plus year legacy of the Territorial brand, culture and commitment to local communities," it said.

Territorial was the fifth-largest deposit holder in Hawaii, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The merger creates the largest regional bank catering to multi-ethnic customers across the continental U.S. and the Hawaiian Islands, Hope said.

When the deal was announced, Hope said it expected the transaction to be about 6% dilutive to its tangible book value, and that it would earn back the dilution in three years. Hope had also estimated that its shareholders would own about 94.4% of the combined entity, while Territorial shareholders would own about 5.6%.