Bank of New York Acquiring Mellon Financial for $16.5 billion

by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

The holidays came early, as it were, for institutional investors after the announcement that Bank of New York Co. agreed to buy Mellon Financial Corp. for about $16.5 billion.

Bank of New York had tried this venture about ten years ago when, in 1998, it offered to pay $23 billion for Mellon Bank Corp. However, that bid was rebuffed by Mellon in the form of then-chairman Frank Cahouet. It took the leaving of Cahouet and the arrival of Robert Kelly, the 52-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of Mellon, to bring about this mighty merger.

The combined company will safeguard $16.6 trillion for institutions, topping JPMorgan Chase & Co. as the world’s largest custody bank. It will manage $1.1 trillion in invested assets and have revenue of about $12 billion a year, the companies said today in a statement.

The companies said they will cut pretax costs by about $700 million a year, or about 8.5 percent of their combined total, in part by shedding about 3,900 of their 40,000 employees over three years. Restructuring charges will be about $1.3 billion, they said in the statement.