BankOne^® + Citi^® = (Bank .0005^® * Bank .0032^® * 14,241 TiniBanks^®) - humans + More crappy service charges³

Seems that after a bit of a lull in the financial services M&A hunt, things are heating up for regionals in response to the newly humongoid BankOne/JP/Chase and BoA/Fleet consolidations in process. Forbes has a nice bit on some of the action in mid-Ohio and the middle Atlantic, handicapping prospects of merely hulking players like Suntrust in Atlanta, Iron City's PNC and Detroit's Comerica. (Curious who the nation's top 20 banks are? Go here. But be quick, it'll be stale by next Wednesday.)

I love these stories if only to see people torturing sports analogies or using terms like "accretive" with a straight face...

North Fork and Greenpoint, however, have thrown a curveball to the merger plate to create a highly accretive deal. The companies are planning to unify their boards, upper management and back-ends but keep both brands--North Fork will continue to focus on small to midsize businesses and Greenpoint will keep its eye on consumers and mortgages. They will be closing 15 out of the combined 270 branches while changing the brand of about 30.

In other words, it's a "smart" deal because a certain lesser number people are going to be issued bigger shovels to swing. It remains to be seen whether "Unify the boards" will find it's way onto WordSpy.com as a synonym for "outplace" or "retired in place". As an aside, I spent some of the last decade toiling for BankOne and the erstwhile Crestar, now Suntrust. For BankOne, the agency had a virtual swat team of transition marketing specialists to keep up with The Big House's voracious march across the Heartland. An acquisition was announced and we were there with friendly "don't worry, this is gonna be great for you" ads packaged and ready to go. The push obviously required a bit of hand-holding and the usual finding of a local, visible goodwill cause, if there wasn't one already, to paste the benevolent happy face on. It's amazing how many bits of stock advernutia you have to churn out and warehouse, ready for stuff like high school football brochures or county fair kissing booths. But every once in a while, you got to do something fun like a life-size backlight diorama for, say, the AmericaWest Center: