Optus Financial Corporation is paying $105 million or more, or up to $53.30 a share, to buy M&F Bancorp, according to Optus and M&F’s merger announcement. M&F shareholders get $46.57 at closing and another $6.73 a share if preferred stock gets repurchased within a year, a contingent structure that puts real money on the table only if Optus clears out M&F’s preferred shares first.
The combined bank will carry $1.3 billion in assets across ten branches in North and South Carolina, the largest Black-owned bank in the country. Optus counted $785.2 million in assets as of the first quarter; M&F brought $517.5 million. James Sills III, M&F’s CEO, takes the top job at the combined company; Optus chairman Paul Mitchell becomes chair.
What does Optus actually get? A century-old Durham deposit base, the M&F name founded in 1907, and a foothold in North Carolina it didn’t have before. Optus itself only dates to 1921, as Victory Savings Bank, with two branches to M&F’s eight.
Most of the capital that’s flowed into Optus and M&F over the years has come as deposits and loans, not acquisition currency: Wells Fargo’s post-2020 investment pledge, State Street’s $100 million MDI/CDFI program that named both banks first beneficiaries, and the NFL’s $78 million loan split across 16 minority banks. A straight cash buyout is the rarer instrument here.
The deal needs shareholder and regulatory sign-off before it closes in the fourth quarter. It will also cut the number of Black-owned banks in the U.S. to 21, one fewer than the 22 that exist today.
Diana Kowalski