Commercial Federal plans to purchase AmerUs Bank

Nebraska's Commercial Federal Corp. plans to buy AmerUs Bank for $200.9 million, the firms announced Feb. 12.

AmerUs has four locations in Springfield. Its parent, AmerUs Group, also owns Carol Jones, Realtors. Overall, the savings bank has 47 branch offices in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Missouri.

The cash-and-stock deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year. Office of Thrift Supervision approval is required. After this acquisition and others pending are closed, Community Federal will have 223 branches, $10.3 billion in assets and $6.4 billion in deposits.

"AmerUs Bank just completed its most profitable year ever," said Marcia S. Hanson, president and chief executive officer of the Des Moines-based AmerUs. "However, to remain competitive in this increasingly consolidating business, we had to make some difficult choices about our ongoing investment."

AmerUs officials said in a release that the thrift is the largest savings bank in Iowa, with $1.5 billion in assets. The release said that size made AmerUs "relatively small on a regional scale."

"In the banking industry today, growth through acquisition is essential to long-term, competitive performance," Roger K. Brooks, chairman of the AmerUs Group, said in a release. "We weighed the many options for investing our capital and concluded that we could not grow adequately in full-service banking to attain the performance we require."

Brooks said in the release that the AmerUs Group would focus on its recently formed consumer lending company.

AmerUs Bank's 15 consumer lending offices will be retained and transferred to the new AmerUs Home Equity Inc. Hanson will be its president and chief executive officer.

The deal is Commercial Federal's fourth acquisition in Iowa in the last year and a half, and its fifth in the Midwest in the last six months. The company, the parent of Commercial Federal Bank, announced in the last six months the acquisition of Liberty Financial Corp., based in Des Moines, and Perpetual Midwest Financial Inc., of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Commercial Federal now operates 115 branches in Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa.

AmerUs Bank has more than 550 employees, 350 of whom are in Des Moines. The AmerUs Group comprises life insurance, real estate and other financial services companies.[[In-content Ad]]