First Niagara completes HSBC conversion

HSBC branches across upstate New York reopened this morning for the first time as First Niagara Bank locations.

Buffalo–based First Niagara closed its acquisition of the HSBC sites on Friday and converted them over the weekend. First Niagara first announced plans to acquire 195 HSBC locations in Upstate, Westchester County, and Connecticut in July.

The HSBC deal will net First Niagara 100 new branches and adds more than 1,200 new employees to First Niagara’s work force.

The branches bring $9.8 billion in deposits and $1.6 billion in loans. First Niagara now has nearly 430 branches with $38 billion in assets, $29 billion in deposits, and about 6,000 employees in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

First Niagara has already closed 16 of its own branches as part of the deal and will close another 19 HSBC branches in the coming months. First Niagara will also sell off 64 branches to KeyBank, Five Star Bank, and DeWitt–based Community Bank in the coming months.

The HSBC deal more than doubles First Niagara’s Upstate branch network to 200 locations. It also makes the bank a major player in the Syracuse, Utica, and Binghamton markets.

First Niagara now has a total of 36 branches in its Central New York region, which includes both the Syracuse and Utica areas, and it brought on more than 200 employees in the market. In Binghamton, the bank now has eight branches and added more than 60 people.

For more on this story, see Friday’s issue of The Central New York Business Journal.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com