Mary Lynn Lenz and her board faced a bittersweet choice. Lenz had arrived at 48-year-old Slade's Ferry Trust Co. five years earlier, from a large-bank background, and she had enjoyed the challenge of building up the Somerset, Mass., lender. Slade's Ferry, publicly traded, had grown to $605 million-assets with decent profitability. But she and the directors, strong believers in strategic planning, had come to a tough three-pronged fork in the road. Steady-as-you-go wouldn't work. Projections indicated that the sheer number of competitors would make the costs of growing by even 5% "astronomical," says Lenz. Yet pulling back and maximizing profits on the book of business the bank already had wasn't too appealing, either. "It wasn't really a good marketing strategy," says Lenz. "Once you pull back, it's very difficult later on to push back in." That left the M&A route, with two prongs of its own: buying and selling. Only a handful of Massachusetts institutions would have made suitable targets, and none looked likely enough to bank on. For the sake of shareholder value, board and banker agreed, it was time to test the waters for sale, and the bank reached out to four prospective purchasers.
展开▼
