http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...4234333774.html?mod=WSJ_Markets_section_Deals
Financier Gerald Ford Strikes Deal to Buy Pacific Capital
By PETER LATTMAN
After two years of scouring the country for a sickly bank to buy, Texas billionaire Gerald Ford has finally landed one.
The investor, who made his fortune buying distressed lenders during the savings-and-loan crisis, agreed to invest $500 million in Pacific Capital Bancorp, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based lender operating 46 branches under five brands, including Santa Barbara Bank & Trust and South Valley National Bank.
Under the terms of the deal, which requires shareholder approval, Mr. Ford will acquire a 91% stake in Pacific Capital and two board seats. Shareholders get virtually wiped out, but are being given a right to buy Pacific Capital stock at 20 cents a share, the same price at which Mr. Ford would acquire his shares.
The company's shares, which trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market, plummeted 47% on Thursday.
But they still trade nearly 11 times their purported value, at $2.19.
The deal also needs approval from the Treasury Department, which in 2008 invested $181 million in Pacific Capital from its Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. The government would have to swap its TARP investment for common stock at 20 cents a share, leaving it with a 7% stake and a roughly $145 million loss.
A Pacific Capital spokesman declined to comment. A Treasury spokeswoman declined to comment.
Pacific Capital, with $7.4 billion in assets, has a balance sheet saddled with soured commercial and residential real-estate loans along the Central coast of California.
Mr. Ford's offer was "the best alternative available to us to assure the company's future," said the bank's chairman, Edward Birch, in a statement.
The 65-year-old Mr. Ford earned his stripes during 1980s S&L crisis. Along with New York financier Ronald Perleman he acquired five failed Texas thrifts, turned them around, and eventually merged them into Golden State Bancorp. Citigroup acquired Golden State in 2002 for $5.3 billion.
That deal gave Mr. Ford the wherewithal to go on a shopping spree during this financial crisis. In November 2008, U.S. regulators granted him license to buy a bank when they granted his investment group a "shelf" national bank charter normally reserved for institutions. This allowed Mr. Ford to get around restrictions that prohibit any one private investor from owning a bank.
Mr. Ford has bid on several lenders over the past 18 months, including Newport Beach, Calif.-based Downey Financial Corp., which was ultimately sold to U.S. Bancorp, and Texas's Guaranty Bank, which was sold to Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA.
Though private-equity firms have played a role in capitalizing struggling U.S. banksâincluding high-profile acquisitions of California's IndyMac Bank and Florida's BankUnitedâthe volume of deals has been less than anticipated. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which has taken over 222 banks since early 2008, has sold far more failed institutions to other banks than it has to private-equity firms, in part due to the agency's wariness of these investors.
Also, the market rally over the past year has made it difficult for private-equity firms to compete against larger, now-healthier banks in bidding for these assets. For example, seven Chicago-area banks seized by the FDIC last week were all sold to larger banks.
Private-equity firms are also wary of rescue financings like Mr. Ford's investment in Pacific Bancorp. The deal brings to mind TPG's $1.35 billion investment two years ago in Washington Mutual, which was wiped out after the FDIC seized the Seattle thrift and sold it to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
"No doubt there's a lot of risk in this deal," Mr. Ford said. "We need to be right about the assessment of the loan portfolio."