Team of Dykema Lawyers Helps Bring Major Midwest Bank Deal to Closure

Schlaybaugh, McDonald, Hunter, Metz, Grob Lend Skills to $912 Million Transaction

Press Mentions

9.18.12

As reported in Law360 and several other industry publications, a multi-discipline team of Dykema attorneys—led by Chairman-Emeritus, Rex Schlaybaugh, Jr., a member of the Corporate practice; D. Richard McDonald, leader of the firm’s Public Company practice; and, Margaret Adams Hunter, who leads Dykema’s Employee Benefits practice—played key advisory roles in a major regional bank acquisition that was announced on September 13, 2012.

In this stock-for-stock deal, valued at just under $1 billion—making it the second-largest M&A transaction in the U.S. banking sector this year—FirstMerit Corporation will acquire Citizens Republic Bancorp, Inc. The team from Dykema—which also included Mark Metz, member in Corporate and Securities, and Steven Grob, member in the Firm’s Tax group—advised Citizens Republic, a Dykema client for a number of years. Schlaybaugh has acknowledged that Citizens Republic’s 2008 participation in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a Treasury investment requiring FirstMerit to make a significant repayment of Citizens Republic’s preferred stock, added complexity to this transaction.

With this merger, the combined enterprise—to be named FirstMerit—will be one of the largest community banking networks in the Midwest, with $24 billion in assets, 415 branches and over 5,000 employees in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin.