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Southern Missouri Bancorp to enter St. Louis via deal

Southern Missouri Bancorp in Poplar Bluff, Mo., will enter the St. Louis market with an agreement to buy Fortune Financial in Arnold, Mo.


The $2.7 billion-asset Southern Missouri said in a press release Tuesday that it will pay $29.9 million for the $254 million-asset parent of FortuneBank. Southern Missouri will also assume about $7.5 million of subordinated debt. 

The deal is expected to close late in the first quarter. 

FortuneBank has $209 milion of loans and $215 million of deposits. 

The acquisition is “an important step in our long-term growth,” Greg Steffens, Southern Missouri’s president and CEO, said in the release. “Fortune has developed a number of business lines that complement our organization well, and [it] provides a point of entry to a large and growing banking market where we believe our community banking model will perform well.” 

Daniel Jones, Fortune’s chairman and CEO, is expected to join Southern Missouri’s board.

Southern Missouri said it plans to cut about 30% of Fortune’s annual noninterest expenses.

Excluding merger charges, the transaction is expected to be 8.8% accretive to Southern Missouri’s earnings per share in the fiscal year that will end on June 30. It should take less than three years for Southern Missouri to earn back an estimated 3.8% dilution to its tangible book value. 

Piper Sandler and Armstrong Teasdale advised Fortune. Silver, Freedman, Taff & Tiernan advised Southern Missouri.

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