Hot-selling young banks now going in 3 years - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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But at $28 a share, GB&T's offer was too good to Mountain's initial investors had paid $10 a share a littl more than two years In itsshort history, had beaten all internao budget forecasts and by its 27th month had hit cumulative profitability -- early by industryg standards. It operates in fast-growing Dawson and Forsytb counties. After agreeing in December to the the banks will closed the deal inApril -- Mountain's thirs anniversary, and the first monty Mountain is eligible under state law to In 2002, the statse changed a law governing the sale of banks, allowinf them to sell after three years instead of five.
Now, sales of three-year-ole banks are accelerating as large banks, willinv to pay top dollar to gain toeholds inattractives markets, are creating impressive returns for Phil Baldwin, president and CEO of , parent of Neighbors Bank, got a similar call from a business acquaintancde at Macon-based (Nasdaq: SBKC) in November -- the three-year anniversary of holding company. In a couple of weeks, his $105.5-million asser bank in white-hot Alpharetta had hashed out a deal that gave his initiapl investors a roughly 135percent return.
Mountain State and Neighbors are just two ofseveralp so-called "de novo" banks that agreed to sell recently, in a break with Other banks younger than four years old that sold or agreedc to be sold in the past year include Dallas-baseed to Memphis-based (NYSE: FHN); and Woodstock-basec SouthBank, which also sold to Security Bank "The idea of buying a bank at that earl a stage had not really caught on [until 2005]," said Walt head of the financial institutions practicr at . Driving the transactions are the convergencer of acquirers looking for market presencwein high-growth areas and successful de novo banks that know and like theifr prospective buyers.
The sale of de novos is expectedr to continue as long as the merger mani that has gripped the Georgia banking industry In 2005, 15 Georgia banks agreed to be acquired, up from 9 in according to data from Atlanta-based .