Blog Coverage: Citizens Financial Acquires Western Reserve Partners to Build its M&A Advisory Team

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LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / May 3, 2017 / Active Wall St. blog coverage looks at the headline from Providence, Rhode Island based Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE: CFG) (“CFG”) as the Company announced on May 02, 2017, that they had acquired Cleveland, Ohio based Western Reserve Partners LLC. (“WRP”), a M&A (mergers and acquisition) advisory firm that offers its financial services to middle market clients. With the acquisition CFG plans to strengthen its M&A and financial advisory services business. The financial details of the transactions were not disclosed. Register with us now for your free membership and blog access at:

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One of Citizens Financial Group’s competitors within the Regional – Mid-Atlantic Banks space, Ameris Bancorp (NASDAQ: ABCB), reported on April 21, 2017, its financial results for Q1 2017. AWS will be initiating a research report on Ameris Bancorp in the coming days.

Today, AWS is promoting its blog coverage on CFG; touching on ABCB. Get all of our free blog coverage and more by clicking on the link below:

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Sharing his views on the acquisition Donald McCree, Vice Chairman and Head of Commercial Banking of Citizens said:

“Citizens is dedicated to delivering the expertise, capabilities, and strong execution to help each client through its business life cycle. We have been moving decisively to broaden our capabilities and this acquisition adds scale and deep expertise, along with a strong cultural fit, that will help us to advise our clients even more effectively.”

Ralph M. Della Ratta, CEO, Managing Partner and Co – Founder of WRP added:

“We are delighted to join such a strong and growing commercial bank. The decision to buy or sell is among the most critical a business can make, and this transaction positions Citizens even more strongly to partner with its clients at that critical stage of their business life.”

About CFG

CFG is a retail bank holding Company that operates through two segments: Consumer Banking and Commercial Banking.

Its Consumer Banking offers services to retail customers and small businesses like deposits, mortgage and home equity lending, auto financing, student loans, personal unsecured lines and loans, credit cards, business loans, wealth management and investment services. Its retail banking division has approximately 3,200 ATMs and 1,200 Bank branches in 11 states in the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest regions.

The Commercial Banking offers a range of financial products and solutions like lending and leasing, deposit and treasury management services, foreign exchange and interest rate risk management solutions, corporate finance, merger and acquisition, and debt and equity capital markets capabilities, etc.

CFG provides its services and financial solution through its subsidiaries, which include Citizens Bank, N.A., and Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania as Citizens Bank, Citizens Commercial Banking and Citizens One.

As on March 31, 2017, CFG had $150.3 billion in assets.

Background

CFG had launched Citizens Capital Markets, Inc. in 2016 to add broker-dealer capabilities to its already existing capital markets platform offered by its banks. In March 2017, CFG had revealed the findings of the new Citizens Commercial Banking survey it had conducted to study the impact of the presidential election on the appetite for mergers and acquisitions. The findings were shared via the Middle Market M&A Outlook that CFG published. The findings of the survey revealed that 73% of the potential buyers and 53% of potential sellers were either involved or were looking at strategic alternatives. This finding proves that the M&A market is a very lucrative field and has great growth potential in the near future.

Terms of the Acquisition

The current acquisition will help CFG to strengthen its M&A Advisory Team so that it can cater to the needs and requirements of its commercial clients. CFG plans to finance the acquisition with its available cash funds. The transaction is expected to close in May 2017 itself, subject to WRP receiving approval from FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc.). CFG has already managed to get all other regulatory approvals required to complete the deal.

Post-merger plans

Once the transaction is completed, WRP will become a part of Citizens Capital Markets, Inc. and operate as a separate division. Once the transaction is completed, WRP’s top management consisting of five other partners will be led by Ralph M. Della Ratta and will report to Donald McCree. The integration of WRP’s employees with CFG’s M&A and financial advisory platform will result in a strong team of over 30 professionals that include nine Managing Directors. On an average, each of these Directors brings with them over 30 years of experience in the financial services sector.

The highly-experienced team of professionals from WRP will give impetus to CFG’s goal of providing thoughtful advice backed by strong execution capabilities to its clients. CFG has made many strategic changes in its organization structure, management team, and diversified its business. The current acquisition of WRP will allow CFG to further expand its presence and business in the Midwest region.

Stock Performance

Citizens Financial’s share price finished yesterday’s trading session at $36.84, slightly down 0.78%. A total volume of 3.86 million shares exchanged hands. The stock has surged 41.53% and 62.60% in the last six months and past twelve months, respectively. Furthermore, since the start of the year, shares of the Company have gained 4.19%. The stock is trading at a PE ratio of 16.94 and has a dividend yield of 1.52%. The market capital of the stock is $18.79 billion.

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