Fort Myers bank acquired in $585 million deal

FineMark National Bank & Trust in Fort Myers has been sold to a Kansas City bank holding company.

The deal is an all-stock transaction worth $585 million.

FineMark Holdings, the bank’s parent company, announced its plans to sell and merge with Commerce Bancshares Inc., a regional bank with $32.4 billion in assets, Monday

FineMark was founded in 2007 and specializes in asset management, banking, investments and planning. It has 13 banking offices in Florida, Arizona and South Carolina.

As of March 31, it had $4 billion in assets, $3.1 billion in deposits and $2.6 billion in loans according to the statement. It is one of two Lee County-based homegrown banks to have more than $1 billion in assets, with the other being Sanibel Captiva Community Bank. One of the last locally-based banks in the region to previously be sold was Naples-based First Florida Integrity Bank; Dallas-based First Foundation Inc. acquired that bank's holding company, TGR Financial Inc., in an all-stock transaction worth $295 million in spring 2021. First Florida, founded in 2009, initially as First National Bank of the Gulf Coast, had $2.3 billion in assets when that deal was announced. 

Finemark’s Chairman and CEO Joseph Catti, in an interview with the Business Observer on Monday, says that under the agreement its existing offices will remain open and FineMark’s leadership will remain in place.

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There will be one minor change that will mostly affect the marketing department. Because of the merger, FineMark will be overseen by a new regulatory body and it will need to remove the word national from its name to become FineMark Bank & Trust.

Otherwise, “I believe, for our clients, it will be business as usual,” he says.

Catti says at the end of last year FineMark began looking at what options it had that would allow it to continue growing and taking care of clients as it had been. The idea soon emerged that if it could find the right partner, that would be the best route to go.

At that time, FineMark’s leaders and Commerce’s leaders had gotten to know one another over the past five years and Commerce “seemed like it would be a very appropriate fit, a very appropriate partnership.”

“What Commerce brings to the table is capital and scale and regulatory expertise,” he says.

“And we bring a company that has shown a successful history of servicing clients and growing and being innovative. And, so, we each are able to bring something to the table and complement each other.”

According to the statement announcing the deal, Kansas City-based Commerce offers payment solutions, investment management and securities brokerage through subsidiaries.

One of those is Commerce Bank, which operates full-service facilities across the Midwest as well as Oklahoma and Denver. It also has wealth offices in Texas — Dallas and Houston — and Naples.

John Kemper, president and CEO of Commerce, says in the statement that "FineMark is a natural culture fit, with a history of strong asset quality, a shared client-centric approach to wealth management and banking, and a commitment to building strong communities."

Combined, he says, the companies will have over $36 billion in assets and over $82 billion in wealth assets under administration.

The deal has already been approved by the board of directors for each company but still needs regulatory approval as well as the approval of FineMark shareholders.The sale is anticipated to close Jan. 1.