RBB, which does business as Royal Business Bank and has $3.7 billion in assets, said April 27 in its first-quarter financial statement that its debt offering “dramatically increases our ability to pursue profitable organic and strategic growth opportunities.”
On a conference call with analysts, RBB Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer David Morris confirmed the bank’s appetite for acquisitions. “We are very interested in mergers and acquisitions, basically, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Texas, Seattle, and we would even expand with a merger here in Southern California if the analytics looked good,” Morris said.
In an interview, he said his institution would shop for a bank with assets in the $400 million to $500 million range on the low end and would seek institutions with as much as $1.2 billion in assets on the high end.
“There are a lot of banks out there that are smaller than us. We’d like to do something meaningful,” he said.
Royal Business Bank has long held a beachhead in Los Angeles. Louis Chang founded the bank in 2008 and expanded through six acquisitions in Chinese American communities.
The acquisitions have given RBB a presence in the San Gabriel Valley, Alhambra, Buena Park, Rowland Heights and Torrance. The bank also has made acquisitions in Las Vegas, New Jersey and New York.
Last year, RBB entered the Chicago market for the first time with the January 2020 purchase of Pacific Global Bank, giving the company two branches in that city’s Chinatown and Bridgeport neighborhoods.
Royal Business Bank, which ranked No. 14 in the Business Journal’s 2020 list of the biggest banks in L.A. as measured in assets, has branches in California, Illinois, Nevada and New York.
In an investor presentation in March, the bank said it was targeting “significant opportunities for future acquisitions across the United States,” particularly among a universe of 35 banks locally or publicly owned in Chinese American communities, or that are subsidiaries of Taiwanese or Chinese banks.
The presentation outlined specific target markets, including other urban areas with high concentrations of Asian Americans in New York and New Jersey, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Honolulu.
