Columbia, Umpqua leaders describe effort to form ‘West Coast’s largest regional bank’
The news of the Columbia and Umpqua bank merger might have come as a surprise to the Northwest on Tuesday, but seeds of the deal were planted in the pandemic.
In an early-morning conference call Tuesday to discuss the merger, the two former rival CEOs discussed their ongoing friendship.
“As you’ve heard me say many times before, the criteria we consider in any merger are that it makes financial sense for our shareholders, it’s complimentary to our business model and it’s culturally compatible. The combination is very consistent with those criteria,” said Clint Stein, president and CEO of Columbia, who will serve as CEO of the newly combined company.
Cort O’Haver, president and CEO of Umpqua, will serve as the executive chairman.
“During the initial phase of the pandemic, Cort and I worked jointly on several occasions, which laid a solid foundation for our relationship. We both quickly realized we cared about the same things,” Stein said Tuesday.
O’Haver shared an example on Tuesday’s conference call, saying that when his banking system needed help in orchestrating pandemic relief to Oregon residents last year, Stein was the only banking leader to step up to help.
“Clint jumped in with both feet, and we were able to provide those funds to participants in the state of Oregon very quickly, at that point,” he said.
“I was convinced at that time ... that if there was a way to get these two companies together and create the West Coast’s largest regional bank, this was the combination. So from my perspective as much as I have admired Columbia and our board has admired Columbia .... that was the linchpin for me.”
“I think part of the reason that we were able to jump in with both feet is our teams collaborated for years,” Stein answered.
Columbia Banking System, one of just a handful of publicly traded companies based in Tacoma, is the acquirer in the merger, and Umpqua will take over the branding of the banks while the holding company overseeing all of it will be based in Tacoma and retain the Columbia name. The company will be traded under Columbia’s ticker symbol (COLB) on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The latest merger has capped a year of growth for Columbia.
In June, Columbia announced a merger agreement with Sacramento-based Bank of Commerce Holdings “which will allow us to expand the reach of our products and services into the northern California market,” Stein noted in the company’s second quarter profile.
That deal closed Oct. 1.
As former News Tribune columnist Bill Virgin recounted in 2018, in its 1996 SEC filing, Columbia noted: “The business strategy of the company is to provide its customers with the financial sophistication and breadth of products of a regional bank while retaining the appeal and service level of a community bank.”
More details for the respective banks’ customers regarding the merger are at umpquabank.com/newsroom/umpqua-bank-and-columbia-bank/.
This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 1:49 PM with the headline "Columbia, Umpqua leaders describe effort to form ‘West Coast’s largest regional bank’."
