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The baby boom has created a contingent of business owners preparing for retirement and planning the next step for their creations. M&T Bank Corp. stands ready to help.
The bank has grown its local work in mergers and acquisitions, taking advantage of the increasing number of business owners heading toward retirement and leaning on an acquisition of its own to lend strength in the area. Bank officials say Rochester is fertile ground for these mergers given its own economic history and will continue to be as more business owners plan to retire.
The bank has worked on more than 10 of these deals spanning the last decade, worth in excess of $1.5 billion in enterprise value, said Robert White, cofounder and co-leader of M&T's mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance group.
Including the work the bank has done in raising capital, which is judged more on the amount of equity or mezzanine debt raised, there is more than $2 billion in total transactions, White added.
M&T's mergers-and-acquisitions work has grown since the bank's 2011 acquisition of Wilmington Trust Corp., White said. This merger, the second largest in M&T Bank's history at the time, included the acquisition of Wilmington Trust Wealth Advisory Services and Corporate Client Services.
The acquisition brought M&T into more work with individual business owners who were making decisions about the future of their endeavors, with a particular focus on retirement plans and succession planning.
"We are working with business owners, planning the trust and making sure they are diligently managing their asset base so it's protected for their families," White said. "We can come in and create liquidity and then go back to Wilmington and make sure that liquid money is protected."
Rochester's demographics and business history have created a sizable number of small businesses reaching this critical decision-making period, said Daniel Burns, president of M&T's Rochester division.
"What makes Rochester such a hotbed for mergers and...