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EverBank Financial has agreed to merge with WaFd, Inc. (NASDAQ:WAFD) in a $3.9 billion reverse merger to create a regional bank with about $75 billion in assets. As part of the deal, EverBank will merge into WaFd, which will remain the publicly traded company but take the EverBank Financial Corp. name. The new company will trade on Nasdaq under the EVBK ticker.
The deal brings together EverBank's digital banking platform and specialty lending business with WaFd's network of more than 200 branches across the Western U.S. Together, the two banks would create a much larger regional institution with a broader customer base, stronger funding sources, and greater scale.
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EverBank could gain a lot from the merger, particularly through access to a public-market listing, a larger deposit base, and WaFd, Inc. (NASDAQ:WAFD)'s extensive branch network in the Western U.S. The combined bank would have about $75 billion in assets, giving EverBank more room to expand its commercial and consumer banking operations while relying less on wholesale funding. The deal would also help diversify EverBank's loan portfolio. Reuters reports that more than 40% of EverBank's roughly $37 billion loan portfolio is currently linked to nonbank financial companies, but that figure would fall to about 28% after the merger.
