By weekend’s end, First Louisiana National Bank signs in Lafayette, Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville will read MidSouth Bank.
MidSouth, headquartered in Lafayette, has completed its $11.5 million purchase of Breaux-Bridge based First Louisiana National, a three-branch bank with $115 million in assets. The purchase agreement also includes 725,000 shares of MidSouth common stock.
“What we acquired in First Louisiana is a healthy, well-run bank with a strong consumer market franchise,” says MidSouth Bank President and CEO Rusty Cloutier in a press release. “This purchase is about two local community banks teaming up to better serve customers. We both believe we will be able to increase lending in St. Martin Parish by leveraging access to MidSouth’s additional products and services, which are supported by a more technologically advanced banking platform and a much larger network of retail banking centers and ATMs.”
First Louisiana National’s Lafayette location will close on Dec. 16 and merge with a nearby MidSouth branch on Moss Street, since the two locations “are virtually side-by-side,” according to the release. The MidSouth operations center in Breaux Bridge at 728 Berard St. will expand, but MidSouth’s Breaux Bridge banking operations will move from its Berard Street location to First La. National’s Mills Avenue branch in the first quarter of 2012.
The merging of systems, products and services will take place the weekend of Dec. 17, according to the release.
“Today we join forces with a familiar and trusted brand that has long been a friendly competitor,” former First Louisiana executive James Fontenot, now the vice president/commercial lender for MidSouth Bank, says in the release. “The reality is that it is increasingly difficult for small banks to absorb the financial burden of more stringent regulatory requirements. And when you couple that with the uncertainty of the economic environment, you realize there is strength in numbers.”
MidSouth, a subsidiary of MidSouth Bancorp Inc., had $1.2 billion in assets as of Sept. 30 and boasts 40 locations throughout Louisiana and Texas.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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