EverBank Financial of Florida has reached an agreement with WaFd, a smaller bank based in the Pacific Northwest, to combine through a reverse merger. The two companies announced that the transaction will establish a regional bank with approximately $75 billion in total assets.
WaFd, which recently rebranded from Washington Federal Bank, holds a market value of roughly $2.7 billion and assets of about $28 billion. Meanwhile, EverBank is valued at around $3.9 billion, with assets totaling approximately $47 billion. EverBank was acquired in 2023 by a group of private equity firms from the pension fund TIAA.
After the deal closes, WaFd will remain the publicly traded entity but will adopt the name EverBank Financial and trade under the ticker symbol "EVBK." The private equity consortium that previously acquired EverBank—including Stone Point Capital, Warburg Pincus, Reverence Capital Partners, Sixth Street, and Bayview Asset Management—will collectively own about 59.2% of the combined company. TIAA, which retained a stake in the 2023 transaction, will also hold shares in the merged entity.
What Drives the Merger
The private equity investors who bought EverBank from TIAA had reportedly been exploring options to sell the bank or take it public. This merger with WaFd provides a clear exit path for those investors. The combined institution will rank among the top 50 banks in the United States by asset size.
Banking executives are increasingly emphasizing the importance of scale in today's competitive landscape. WaFd CEO Brent Beardall and EverBank CEO Greg Seibly first discussed the potential deal over dinner, where the topic of size came up early in the conversation. "You have to get bigger to survive," Seibly said in an interview, adding that many banks "are in the same position."
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