Houston-based independent bank Amegy Bancorporation, Inc. — known until recently as Southwest Bank of Texas — is the subject of a takeover battle between Birmingham, Ala.-based Compass Bancshares Inc. and Salt Lake City-based Zions Bancorp, according to the Houston Business Journal (article not yet online). The competition for Amegy will likely be decided within the next week.
Amegy is a relatively small bank holding company with a market capitalization of $1.6 billion and first quarter net income of $about $17 million, but it is one of the few remaining independent banks in the growing and attractive Texas retail banking market. Amegy has about 75 branches in Texas that are located primarily in the the Houston and Dallas metro areas.
The Amegy is the latest in a series of big bank acquisitions in the Texas banking market. Those acquisitions have included Wachovia Corp.’s $13.7 billion acquisition of SouthTrust Corp. and Citigroup, Inc.’s purchase of First American Bank SSB.
Compass is better known in Texas than Zions, but is actually a slightly smaller bank holding company. Compass has about 400 branches in six states in the South and Southwest, about a third of which are in in Texas. Compass has a market capitalization of about $5.6 billion on reported assets of $28.8 billion and reported first quarter net income of just under $100 million. Zions has roughly the same number of branches as Compass, but they are based in eight Western states. Zions has a market cap of $6.6 billion on assets of about $32 billion, and reported first quarter net income first-quarter net income of $110.2 million.
Update: Zions appears to the winner.