Shop Talk: Q&A With Richard Collins, United Bank
Photo/Christina H. Davis
Richard Collins, President & CEO, United Bank.
Richard Collins has spent the last several years as the head of West Springfield-based United Bank, but he spent a large chunk of his career in Worcester. During his time in Worcester he was president of Mechanics Bank before it was acquired by Bank Boston. Now he’s coming back to Worcester through United Bank’s soon-to-be complete acquisition of Worcester-based Commonwealth National Bank. While the deal is nearly sealed, it didn’t come easy. United Bank was actually in a bidding war with Berkshire Bank for Commonwealth National’s commercial lending portfolio and branch network. Here, Collins talks about the prospects for a bigger United Bank and the concerns he has about future banking regulations.
>> What’s the timetable with the acquisition of Commonwealth National?
The legal merger will take place at the end of this month. That’s not going to be the most visible part of it, though you will see some evidence of that. We’ll be making advertisements, we’ll be making announcements that Commonwealth is now part of United. Then, the actual signage changes, systems conversions, and people actually having United Bank on their checks all will take place in February.
>> So the plan is for Commonwealth National to take on the United Bank name?
That’s correct. But the signs aren’t going to change until February.
>> When the deal is done, what’s United Bank’s footprint going to look like?
Well, we have a pretty sizeable footprint in the Springfield area — 16 locations. After the Commonwealth merger we’ll have what you could call a toehold in Worcester. They have six locations, three of which are in Worcester. That number of locations isn’t really enough for a community the size of Worcester, so we’ll begin the process of finding additional locations over the next few years to build up our footprint.
>> What made this deal attractive for United Bank?
Well, probably two things. We have been looking for opportunities to grow and we need to grow our bank because we’ve recently raised quite a bit of capital. We decided that we wanted to grow in markets that are pretty close to the area where we are operating, and Worcester qualifies. The other aspect that made it attractive is the fact that I know the people at Commonwealth quite well. I’ve had the pleasure of working with people that form the core of Commonwealth’s management team before, so I have a great deal of respect for what they’ve accomplished and what they can do.
>> Several regional banks have moved into Massachusetts or expanded their presence recently, including People’s United and Webster Bank. Is that changing the marketplace at all?
Well, the larger regional banks are trying to gain a foothold in Massachusetts because Massachusetts in lots of ways is an attractive market. So, why shouldn’t they? And they’re trying to grow and expand as well. We think we compete pretty well against those larger banks.
>> What are the lessons you learned from living through the various bank mergers and divestitures?
By being involved in some mergers I think I’ve got a reasonably good sense of what makes a merger work well and what doesn’t. So we’re trying to do it the right way. We’re spending a lot of time communicating with the people at Commonwealth, making sure they have a chance to provide input to us as we make decisions as to how our combined organization is going to go forward.
>> There’s a lot of talk on the federal level about banking regulations. Is there anything that you’re watching or that has you concerned?
People look at the bank industry saying those bankers, they’ve really gotten us into some trouble and they’ve cost us a lot of money in terms of taxpayer dollars for a bailout. What people don’t really realize is they aren’t talking about the community banks. Most of the banks like us, our size, didn’t do any of that stuff. Our growth has been plain vanilla. We didn’t need a bailout. I’m very concerned about what the future could bring, mostly because Congress is determined to do something to bring those rascally bankers to heel. People like us, people like Commonwealth, people like Flagship Bank in Worcester, we aren’t part of the problem. So, you don’t need to do too much to us to make us part of the solution.
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