Combined bank would rank among top 50 U.S. lenders by assets

Florida-based EverBank Financial and Seattle-based WaFd announced Monday they have agreed to a reverse merger that would create a regional bank with about $75 billion in assets, placing the combined institution among the top 50 U.S. lenders by size.

Under the structure announced by the companies, WaFd would remain the publicly traded company in the deal, change its name to EverBank Financial and trade under the ticker “EVBK.” WaFd, which recently changed its name from Washington Federal Bank, has a market value of around $2.7 billion and about $28 billion in assets. EverBank has a valuation of around $3.9 billion and about $47 billion in assets.

The transaction comes amid broader consolidation in U.S. regional banking, where industry executives increasingly say scale matters more than ever. Scale was one of the first things WaFd CEO Brent Beardall and EverBank CEO Greg Seibly discussed when they met over dinner to talk about a potential transaction, the companies said.

“You’ve got to be bigger to be able to survive,” Seibly said in an interview. A lot of banks are “staring down the same thing,” he added.

The two companies described the pairing as complementary in footprint and channel. EverBank operates primarily as a digital bank with a few dozen branches, mostly in Florida and California. Seattle-based WaFd has more than 200 branches across Washington, Oregon and other Western states.

“The strength on one side complements a gap on the other side,” Seibly said.

EverBank was acquired in 2023 by a consortium of private-equity firms that included Stone Point Capital, Warburg Pincus, Reverence Capital Partners, Sixth Street and Bayview Asset Management. Those firms bought the bank from the pension fund TIAA, which kept a stake in the 2023 sale. The consortium and TIAA would collectively own about 59.2% of the combined company after the deal, the companies said.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that the private-equity owners had been exploring either selling EverBank or taking it public.