One of Spain’s biggest banks said Wednesday it is buying Miami-based TotalBank for $300 million in cash, using South Florida as an entry point to tap the U.S. market.
Madrid-based Banco Popular EspaM-qol, with assets topping $120 billion, will buy all the stock in the respected South Florida community bank from Miami’s Total Bancshares Corp.
TotalBank’s largest owner today is Chairwoman Adrienne Arsht, who negotiated the sale and obtained what she called one of the best premiums ever paid for a Miami-Dade County bank.
The companies said the purchase will give Banco Popular EspaM-qol a foothold to grow in Florida and across the United States. It also will boost the financial muscle of 33-year-old TotalBank, which now has $1.4 billion in assets and 14 branches in Miami-Dade.
The deal underscores South Florida’s allure for banks from Spain, one of the best-performing economies in Europe for years.
In January, Barcelona-based Banco de Sabadell agreed to buy Miami-based TransAtlantic Bank for about $175 million. More than 300 companies from Spain now call South Florida home, including many finance, insurance, telecom, high-tech and food businesses. Some use the region as the hub for commerce with neighboring Latin America, tapping into the area’s wealth of Spanish-speaking professionals.
“Culturally, it’s a natural fit. And South Florida is a very solid community financially,” Arsht said in an interview Wednesday. “This isn’t the last we’ve seen of acquisitions by banks from Spain.”
Arsht said all 255 employees at TotalBank “from the teller in Perrine to the president,” will keep their jobs. She personally plans to pursue other interests, including working with nonprofit groups set up by people in their 20s and 30s.
The Banco Popular EspaM-qol group, founded in 1926, bills itself as the third-largest banking group in Spain with a network of more than 2,400 branches in Spain, Portugal and France and $7.3 billion in capital.
