More Banks Want To Sell For This Reason

People often ask what are the main factors that are motivating banks to sell. Not surprisingly, sellers frequently cite a lack of succession planning, a lack of scale and increasing costs for technology and compliance.

But one surprising area that is becoming more influential is shareholder liquidity, now more often the primary factor we see pushing institutions to sell.

For many banks, the age of their average shareholder is approaching or exceeds 70. This leads to three primary challenges:

• As shareholders pass away, the personal representative often needs to liquidate shares in order to settle the estate. If the issuer can’t provide a source of liquidity, the estate will “dump” the shares, sometimes at a steep discount.
• Other shareholders are engaged in estate planning and seeking to sell shares.
• Local shareholders are bequeathing shares to children and grandchildren spread all over the country who have no commitment to the community or desire to hold shares in the local bank.

There are also de novo banks whose investors bought in during the late 1990s and early 2000s with the promise of a 10- to 15-year time horizon. They are 20 years older and eager for a liquidity event.

There are many tools institutions can use to provide shareholders with increased liquidity, including:

1. Matching Programs. Some of our clients keep “interested purchaser” and “interested sellers” lists, in order to help match prospective buyers and sellers. This can be a simple way to help shareholders find an avenue for sale. If a shareholder asks for help in selling their shares, you can provide them with a list including the contact information of interested purchasers.

There are important considerations when administering a matching program. You will want to (1) avoid activity that would require registration with the SEC as a broker-dealer, and (2) make sure you, as the issuer, are not seen as “offering” the shares. To mitigate those risks, you should play a very limited role in any matching transaction. You should not negotiate, offer opinions, handle transaction money, or actively promote the service or solicit customers. You may, however, provide certain limited information and make shareholders aware of the service.

2. Repurchase Programs. Repurchase programs can take many forms, but the two most common are buyback programs and tender offers. With a buyback program, the board adopts a policy authorizing the company to repurchase shares within certain parameters. You may then inform shareholders of the program, but you may not actively solicit shareholders to participate in the program. Alternatively, a tender offer is an active solicitation whereby you ask a shareholder to make an investment decision in a limited amount of time. Furthermore, a tender offer is often more successful because it is “easy.” A shareholder simply needs to accept the issuer’s offer and doesn’t need to engage in negotiations with the company or other unfamiliar shareholders. Tender offers also allow the issuer to target strategic goals, such as offering redemption to small shareholders or out-of-state shareholders.

There are certain bank regulatory considerations involved with any share buyback or redemption transaction. In addition, specific securities laws and requirements apply to tender offers.

3. Transfer Services. Legislation enacted in recent years (the JOBS Act and the FAST Act) allows the use of a third-party online platform to implement certain securities transactions. By using a third-party platform, you can remain involved and offload most of the compliance risk to the vendor. Such platforms can often act as a white-labeled bulletin board for your shareholders to interact.

4. Listing. There are always the options of listing your securities over-the-counter (or OTC), on the recently-created bank-specific OTCQX, or going public and listing your shares on NASDAQ or NYSE.

To fund some of the repurchase initiatives identified above, some banks have successfully raised new capital from community members and customers, many of whom have not had the opportunity to invest in the bank. When a repurchase program is coupled with an offering, several banks have successfully “recycled” their shareholder base, buying time to execute their strategy without the added pressure of liquidity concerns.

There are a lot of options to consider, but community bank executives and boards should be aware of the increasing challenge shareholder liquidity is presenting to their peers and how to manage it proactively.