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Banker & Tradesman file photo
The Federal Reserve has approved Brookline Bancorp’s acquisition of New York-based PCSB Bank.
Yesterday’s approval came nearly seven months after the parent company of Brookline Bank and Bank Rhode Island announced plans to acquire PCSB Financial Corp., the parent company of PCSB Bank, in a cash and stock deal valued at approximately $313 million.
Brookline Bancorp will operate PCSB as its third subsidiary bank and first outside New England. Based in Yorktown Heights, PCSB has 14 branches and about $1.9 billion in assets.
Brookline Bancorp has about $8.6 billion in assets, and the PCSB acquisition will put the holding company over the $10 billion-asset threshold, triggering the Durbin Amendment for the company.
The approval was a unanimous decision by the Fed’s Board of Governors.
The acquisition cannot be completed until at least the 15th calendar days after yesterday’s decision, and it must be completed within three months, unless an extension is requested. When the deal was announced in May, the bank had targeted the second half of 2022 to complete the acquisition.
Brookline Bancorp had initially set an October date for PCSB Financial Corp.’s shareholders to elect whether they wanted to receive stock or cash in exchange for their PCSB shares. Brookline has extended that deadline a few times to reduce time between the election date and the effective date of the merger. Earlier this week, the deadline was extended to Dec. 20.
