Wells Fargo to Pay $209 Million for Michigan Bank

Wells Fargo & Co., the seventh-largest U.S. bank, agreed to buy Michigan Financial Corp. for $209 million in stock, its first acquisition in Michigan.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, which earlier this year agreed to buy smaller banks in Texas, New Mexico and California, agreed to pay 4.4 million of its shares for Marquette, Mich.-based Michigan Financial. The bank has $834 million in assets and employs 675 people in 34 branches. It also owns an insurance company.

Wells Fargo, which was formed in last year’s $32-billion merger of Wells Fargo and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corp., has been buying banks with less than $1 billion in assets to sell more products to the acquired banks’ customers.

Wells said it plans to offer “better products and a broader product line that can help us earn 100 percent” of the business from Michigan Financial customers, J. Lanier Little, regional president for Norwest Banks in Wisconsin and Illinois, a unit of Wells Fargo, said in a statement.

The purchase is expected to close in the first quarter.

Shares of Michigan Financial rose $2.50 to close at $32.25 on Nasdaq, while Wells Fargo shares fell $1.25 to close at $46.13 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Wells Fargo has 6,000 branches with assets of $207 billion in 21 Western and Midwestern states.