THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 20, 1995 TAG: 9507200518
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
Officials with Seaboard Bancorp Inc., the parent of Virginia Beach thrift Seaboard Savings Bank, and Bank of Hampton Roads in Chesapeake said Wednesday that they have halted their merger negotiations.
The two institutions announced an agreement in late April for Bank of Hampton Roads to acquire Seaboard for a combination of cash and stock valued at $7.7 million.
After disclosing that agreement, Seaboard received unsolicited merger offers from other institutions, said P. Douglas Richard, Seaboard's president and chief executive officer.
``The amounts that the other institutions were talking about were greater than the Bank of Hampton Roads had proposed,'' Richard said.
He declined to identify those institutions or the terms they have offered. Seaboard's talks with those suitors are continuing, he said.
Seaboard's negotiations with Bank of Hampton Roads had not gotten beyond a nonbinding letter of intent when they ended, Richard said.
Seaboard chairman James L. Harrell III said in a statement issued Wednesday that ``maximizing shareholder value was necessarily the immediate goal of the management and directors of Seaboard.''
Jack W. Gibson, president and CEO of Bank of Hampton Roads, said Seaboard and Bank of Hampton Roads had revisited the topic of what price would be paid for Seaboard. However, ``we thought it was in each other's interest to pursue other plans,'' Gibson said.
Bank of Hampton Roads had held preliminary discussions with state and federal regulators about its agreement to acquire Seaboard but had not filed a merger application before the negotiations ended, he said.
At the end of March, Seaboard had 766 shareholders and 4.99 million common shares outstanding.
KEYWORDS: MERGER by CNB