Valley National Bank Says It Will Sell to Wells Fargo

Valley National Bank in Glendale, which was founded by a group that included the family of baseball legend Casey Stengel, agreed Thursday to be acquired for $55 million by Wells Fargo & Co., the San Francisco-based parent of Wells Fargo Bank.

Valley National, with $255.4 million in assets as of June 30, operates two offices in Glendale and branches in Burbank, Eagle Rock, Montrose, Toluca Lake and Van Nuys.

Wells Fargo, with $47.8 billion in assets as of June 30, is the nation’s 11th-largest bank holding company by assets. Wells Fargo Bank operates 457 branch offices in California.

Subject to Approval

The proposed merger extends Wells Fargo’s strategy of expanding in California in large part by acquisitions, said spokesman Wes Lockwood. In 1986, Wells Fargo bought Crocker National Corp., the parent of Crocker National Bank, and last year it purchased Barclays Bank of California.

Wells Fargo and Valley National said that their agreement in principle called for Valley National’s shareholders to receive about $30 per share and that the deal remained subject to approval by those shareholders and regulatory agencies. Valley National has about 1.84 million total shares outstanding.

Valley National was founded in 1957 by a group led by John M. Lawson, a former mayor of Glendale, whose sister, Edna, was married to Stengel, the fabled manager of the New York Yankees and later of the New York Mets.

Italian Deal

Lawson was the bank’s first chairman and Stengel was an honorary vice president, Lawson’s son, John M. Lawson Jr., said in a telephone interview Thursday. The younger Lawson, a Valley National director, owns or has voting control of about 6% of Valley National’s stock and said he plans to vote the shares in favor of the merger.

Lawson’s father died in 1981. Stengel died in 1975, his wife in 1978.

Valley National previously had agreed in 1987 to be purchased by an Italian bank holding company, Instituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino, for $46.7 million. But the deal later collapsed.

Valley National, which earned $4.1 million last year, routinely posts a return on average assets of more than 1%, which is considered an excellent performance. In 1988, for instance, its return was 1.63%. The return measures how profitably a bank uses the assets at its disposal.