Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Monday, December 8, 1997
American Savings completes acquisition
American Savings Bank, the savings and loan subsidiary of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc., completed its acquisition of Bank of America's Hawaii savings bank branches on schedule Saturday, HEI said today.Final numbers aren't in but the deal increased the assets of American Savings to about $5.6 billion from $3.8 billion, doubled the number of its deposit accounts and increased the number of loan accounts by 60 percent, American Savings said. The buyout, originally estimated at $96 million, was announced in late May.
Telecom industry to converge on Oahu
Some 1,500 leaders of the telecommunications industry from around the Pacific Rim will be in Honolulu next month for a conference that will look at the remarkable progress of global communications so far and take a peek into the future.The 20th annual Pacific Telecommunications Conference will be held Jan. 11-14 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
The final session will be carried by satellite to 25 Pacific-Asia venues, allowing another 3,000 people to participate. For more information call the Pacific Telecommunications Council at 941-3789.
Two Southern banks in $2.7 billion merger
JACKSON, Miss. -- First American Corp. is buying Deposit Guaranty Corp. in a $2.7 billion stock swap to combine two Southern-based banks that have operations in 11 states stretching from Texas and Nebraska to Virginia. The deal, announced today, would create a financial institution with assets of $17.4 billion, making it the nation's 42nd-largest bank.Jackson, Miss.-based Deposit Guaranty has $6.8 billion in assets, 3,500 employees and 171 offices in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. It has mortgage offices in Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, Indiana and Iowa. Nashville-based First American has $10.6 billion in assets, 4,200 employees and 169 offices in Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia.
Swiss banks form world powerhouse
ZURICH, Switzerland -- Union Bank of Switzerland is buying Swiss Bank Corp. for $25.8 billion worth of stock to form the world's second biggest bank and a new force in European banking as trade barriers come down across the continent.The announcement today came in a joint statement after days of rumors and sparked a sharp rise today in the shares of the two firms' stock: Union Bank was up 13 percent, Swiss Bank 6.5 percent.
About 13,000 jobs will be lost worldwide over the next few years as a result of the merger, nearly half of them in Switzerland. A total of 56,000 people work for the two firms, 70 percent of them in Switzerland.
The new bank will be called UBS United Bank of Switzerland and will have new management. Its assets of $644 billion would make it second only to Japan's Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.