Customers Bancorp Inc. purchased $631 million of venture-banking loans from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., paying about 85% of the portfolio’s book value, and is adding a team of bankers that had worked on the financing.
(Bloomberg) — Customers Bancorp Inc. purchased $631 million of venture-banking loans from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., paying about 85% of the portfolio’s book value, and is adding a team of bankers that had worked on the financing.
The West Reading, Pennsylvania-based bank recruited 30 team members from the group that originated the loans, according to a statement Friday. The bankers will join Customers in the next few weeks. The portfolio was acquired by the FDIC when it seized Signature Bank in March, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. New York-based Signature was one of several regional banks that collapsed in quick succession this year.
The team will give clients “access to the capital to grow from innovation to maturity,” Customers said in the statement. The new employees have long-standing relationships with clients, and their addition gives Customers venture-banking client coverage in Austin, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Southern California, Chicago, Denver, the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, and Washington, D.C.
“This team has deep relationships with their clients over the past two decades,” Customers Chief Executive Officer Jay Sidhu said in the statement. “They will enhance our relationship-based banking model focused on serving all banking needs of our clients.”
Customers shares climbed 1.5% to $29.70 at 9:03 a.m. in early New York trading. They’ve gained 3.3% this year through Thursday.
Customers Bancorp has pushed in the past few years to increase its digital capabilities, including the introduction of a real-time payments platform that caters to businesses such as crypto-trading firms and institutional investors. It’s emerged as one of the few US firms still banking the digital-asset sector since the collapse of FTX and a string of bank failures kicked off by the collapse of crypto-friendly Silvergate Capital Corp.
The technology and life sciences portfolio will be combined with Customers’ existing technology and venture capital banking division, which is based in Boston, the bank said. The portfolio of capital call loans to venture capital firms will be combined with an existing capital call line portfolio in its fund-finance group, based in New York and Chicago.
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