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Minnesota-based Central Bank grew out of the last recession when Naples part-time resident John Morrison acquired the struggling bank with the help of regulators in 1988.
Now healthy, the Stillwater, Minn.-based bank is growing, again courtesy of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Its most recent acquisition: Commerce Bank of Southwest Florida in Fort Myers.
“We've acquired three banks through the FDIC process,” says Larry Albert, president of Central Bank, referring to recent FDIC-assisted bank acquisitions in Minnesota totaling about $400 million in assets.
This is Central's first Florida acquisition. Albert's reasoning: “Sooner or later, the market will come back around and business will be better down here.” No executive has been named to lead the Fort Myers operation yet.
State regulators shut down Commerce Bank and appointed the FDIC as receiver on Nov. 20. As of Aug. 28, Commerce had $79.7 million in assets and $76.7 million in deposits. The FDIC agreed to share in losses on about $61 million of Commerce's assets.
Albert says Morrison is always looking for opportunities along Florida's Gulf Coast, though he declined to say whether more acquisitions are in the works. “You don't know what's going to present itself,” Albert says. Stay tuned.
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