BB&T To Buy National Penn Bancshares For About $1.8 Bln

(RTTNews) - BB&T Corp. (BBT) said Monday that it has agreed to buy National Penn Bancshares, Inc. (NPBC) in a cash and stock deal valued at about $1.8 billion.

Under the deal, which was approved by the board of directors of each company, merger consideration will be about $1.8 billion consisting of 70% BB&T common stock and 30% cash. National Penn stockholders can elect to receive 0.3206 of a share of BB&T common stock or $13.00 in cash for each share of National Penn common stock, subject to proration such that total consideration will consist of about $550 million in cash and about 31.6 million BB&T common shares.

The merger consideration is valued at $13.00 per share based on the average closing price of BB&T over the 20 trading days ending on August 17.

National Penn, headquartered in Allentown, Pa., has $9.6 billion in assets, $6.7 billion in deposits and 124 banking offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

The acquisition will significantly expand BB&T's footprint in the Mid-Atlantic region and improve its deposit market share to #4 in Pennsylvania.

BB&T expects to incur pre-tax merger and integration costs of about $100 million and expects to achieve annual cost savings of about $65 million.

BB&T expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings per share in the first full year excluding one-time charges and expects the deal to exceed its IRR hurdle.

The acquisition is expected to close in mid-2016.