The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday approved Bank of the Ozarks' record-setting deal to buy Community & Southern Bank of Atlanta, along with another deal to buy C1 Financial Inc. of St. Petersburg, Florida.
The publicly traded Little Rock-based company (Nasdaq: OZRK) announced the all-stock CSB deal, worth about $800 million, in October. It would be the single biggest acquisition by an Arkansas bank in terms of both purchase price and assets acquired. It would also increase Bank of the Ozarks' presence in Georgia and Florida.
The company announced the C1 Financial deal in November. The all-stock deal, worth $402.5 million, will put Bank of the Ozarks in Miami and Orlando for the first time.
Community & Southern Bank has about $4.4 billion in assets. C1 has about $1.7 billion in assets. As of March 31, Bank of the Ozarks had about $11.4 billion in assets.
Bank of the Ozarks already has 28 branches in Georgia, the result of aggressive acquisition of failing banks along the East Coast during the financial crisis. With the addition of CSB's network, Bank of the Ozarks will have 75 Georgia branches compared with 80 in Arkansas.
Ozarks anticipates closing the CSB transaction on or about July 20, and expects to close the C1 deal on or about the next day.