Pittsburgh’s PNC Financial Services Group (PNC) said Monday it reached an agreement to acquire Colorado lender FirstBank for $4.1 billion, moving one of the largest regional banks in the US one step closer to becoming a coast-to-coast brand.
The deal would triple the size of PNC’s branch network in Colorado to 120, giving the lender a 20% share of total retail deposits in the major market of Denver, according to PNC.
The acquisition of a lender with nearly $27 billion in assets wouldn’t move PNC higher than its current spot as the country’s eighth-largest US bank by assets, but it would help close the gap with super-regional rivals Capital One (COF) and US Bancorp (USB).
The acquisition, which PNC expects to close in 2026, is the latest proof that a consolidation wave in US banking is beginning to heat up during President Trump’s second term in office.
For the year through Sept. 5, there were already 117 bank merger deals, compared with 133 and 100 for all of 2024 and 2023, respectively, according to Mercer Capital.
“Regulators appear more open to bank consolidation and more willing to expedite merger reviews,” TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote in a Monday note.
Learn about high-yield savings accounts, money market accounts, and CD accounts.
Some other notable bank deals this year also involved regional lenders. In July, Nashville’s Pinnacle Financial Partners (PNFP) agreed to acquire Columbus, Ga.-based Synovus for $8.6 billion, and Columbus lender Huntington Bancshares (HBAN) announced an agreement to acquire Dallas-based Veritex Holdings for $1.9 billion.
Two months earlier, in May, Capital One completed its $35.3 billion acquisition of Discover Financial.
PNC’s stock was down slightly during early Monday morning trading. The stock has climbed about 6% year to date while also underperforming larger rivals like JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Bank of America (BAC), which benefited more from a rebound in their bigger Wall Street operations.
PNC CEO William Demchak has been vocal about his view that US regulators need to make it easier for regional banks to get bigger so they can compete with industry giants and ensure that power isn’t concentrated in the hands of a few lenders.
Demchak also wants PNC to evolve so it’s no longer considered a regional bank.
That means growing independently, organically or through acquisitions, and establishing a coast-to-coast brand without straying from its roots as a plain-vanilla lender.
“When opportunities come, we’ll take advantage of them, and this is a great example,” PNC head of retail Alex Overstrom told Yahoo Finance.
