Middlesex Savings Bank of Natick has requested that the state approve the creation of a new mutual holding company, Middlesex Bancorp MHC, which is necessary for it to acquire Medway-based Strata Bank.
“We decided to do this before Strata was even a possibility, but now the two processes have become interconnected,” said John R. Heerwagen, Middlesex Savings Bank’s chairman, president and CEO.
“There are long-term benefits to reorganizing. It would let us purchase stock banks and to bring in another bank into common ownership with the holding company, but let that bank have its own separate identity” Heerwagen said.
The new mutual holding company will be called Middlesex Bancorp MHC, and will be the surviving company that owns Middlesex Savings Bank. Strata Bank is owned by a mutual holding company, Service Bancorp., and had suffered losses in 2008.
