THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503240539
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
TideMark Bancorp Inc., a Newport News thrift holding company that struggled for years under the weight of foreclosed real estate, will be acquired today by Crestar Financial Corp.
Crestar said it will reopen only four of TideMark's 12 branches -two in Newport News, one in Hampton and one in Gloucester. The remaining eight branches were permanently closed Thursday afternoon.
Crestar said it offered jobs to about 40 of TideMark's 120 employees. Thirty have accepted. The remaining employees will receive severance pay and help finding other jobs, Crestar said.
Richmond-based Crestar agreed last September to pay $38 million, or $5.50 a share, in cash and stock for TideMark's 6.94 million shares.
The merger agreement was approved by TideMark shareholders in early February.
Crestar, the largest Virginia-based banking company and an aggressive buyer of thrifts, will pay almost twice TideMark's book value of $3 a share.
In exchange, Crestar will pick up $248 million of deposits, $169 million of loans and 36,000 new accounts.
TideMark, whose history dates back to 1887, was battered in the late 1980s and early 1990s by an abundance of sour assets, a shrinking capital base, and investigations by state and federal banking regulators.
During the 1980s, TideMark had been an active lender to developers of hotels in Virginia and North Carolina.
But with the collapse of commercial real estate values in the late 1980s and early 1990s, TideMark was forced to take back several hotel properties through foreclosure, which cut into its earnings and capital. by CNB