Berkshire Hills To Acquire Firestone Financial For $53 Mln

(RTTNews) - Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc. (BHLB) Friday said it signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition of privately held Needham, Massachusetts based Firestone Financial Corp. for around $53 million. The commercial specialty finance company will be added to Berkshire as an operating subsidiary.

The acquisition is expected to be accretive to Berkshire's 2016 earnings per share and to generate a return on equity in excess of 15%. The management team of Firestone will be continued.

The acquisition is priced at 130 percent of Firestone's adjusted tangible book value, with 75 percent of the consideration will be paid in BHLB common stock and 25 percent in cash. Berkshire said the transaction is expected to be $0.08 dilutive to its tangible book value per share, with a related payback period of approximately 2.5 years.

Firestone has been in business for 50 years had approximately $190 million in loans outstanding spread across multiple industries and market areas.