Shareholders of Mid-Southern Bancorp approved an outside proposal that the Salem, Ind., company hire an investment bank to help it find a buyer.
The $266.4 million-asset Mid-Southern disclosed in a regulatory filing that nearly 1.1 million shareholders backed the proposal by J. David Rosenberg that it retain an investment bank “to guide the company in promptly taking steps to merge or sell … on terms that will maximize stockholder value.”
Rosenberg’s proposal pointed to the company’s declining tangible book value and stock price. While profits had improved, the investor asserted that they remained “well below a satisfactory return commensurate with the risk of stockholders’ invested equity capital.”
Mid-Southern said in a regulatory filing that, while it had already met with two investment banks in the prior year, “we believe that actively seeking a buyer would be a distraction … and may damage our reputation with our clients by creating uncertainty.”
Citing market volatility and recent high-profile bank failures, Mid-Southern said it believed the current market to be “an especially inopportune time to explore a sale of the bank.”