Watch now: Bank on Buffalo acquires Bank of Akron, plus 120 years of history – Buffalo News

Consider all the wars, recessions and other economic upheavals the nation has endured since 1900.

The Covid-19 pandemic, it turns out, will be the last of those challenges for the Bank of Akron to survive on its own. On Monday, the bank bid farewell to its status as an independent financial institution, as CNB Financial completed its $64.5 million acquisition. The Bank of Akron’s six locations were rebranded as Bank on Buffalo, the fast-growing division CNB established four years ago, which now has 10 area branches.

As Bank on Buffalo and its parent looked to the future, it was also a moment to take stock of where everything started over a century ago, as the Wickware National Bank of Akron on Main Street. In the early 1930s, Eugene P. Forrestel saved the bank from financial ruin, launching a long tradition of family leadership of the bank that has just now ended.

“The single thing I’m most proud of is, in the 88 years my family has been here, we never once scaled back because of an economic downturn, not once, not one iota,” said E. Peter Forrestel II, the bank’s former CEO and former vice chairman, and a grandson of Eugene Forrestel. “We always ran it so that we could be heading forward and never have to retrench. So we didn’t try to hit home runs. We tried to just keep hitting singles and doubles and paying attention to our community. And that gives me immense pride.”

That history is now in Bank on Buffalo’s hands. Fifty-two of the Bank of Akron’s employees joined Bank on Buffalo, as branches and electronic systems were converted over the weekend. Bank on Buffalo now has 108 employees.

Forrestel said when the Bank of Akron decided it was time to find a merger partner last year, CNB and its Bank on Buffalo division emerged as the best fit.

“They understand banking in tiny little communities,” he said. “They know how to bank and serve small towns, because they’ve been doing it for 155 years. So when you pick a partner, you want a partner who knows how to do the things you know how to do. On that count, we succeeded very, very well.”

Bank on Buffalo will continue operating all of the Bank of Akron’s locations, including its newest one, in Wilson. Bank of Akron officials say they are awestruck by how customers have embraced that branch since it opened last November. The small Niagara County community had been without a bank branch for more than five and a half years, and clamored for another bank to fill the void. 

“They had so many new accounts coming in the first couple of weeks, they had to bring extra people in,” Forrestel said. “They couldn’t keep up.”

When CNB struck a deal to buy the Bank of Akron in December, no one pictured the economic damage coming from Covid-19. In the months between the tentative agreement and a completed deal, unemployment has soared and many businesses are struggling with the effects of state-directed shutdowns and other disruptions.

Martin T. Griffith, Bank on Buffalo’s president, said some companies are thriving amid the pandemic and can’t keep product on the floor.

“But we have to acknowledge also that we have the hotel industry, we have some hospitality-type industries that are really, really struggling,” he said. “They’re going to continue to struggle for the foreseeable future.”

Griffith said Bank on Buffalo doesn’t have a heavy concentration in those “high-risk” industry sectors. But about 15% to 20% of its commercial loan portfolio is in “some form of payment forgiveness, some type of deferral of interest and/or principal payment structure.”

“As a banking community, we are in no way out of the woods with this thing,” Griffith said. “There will be businesses that won’t make it through this. But we’re also seeing a lot of our own customers reinvent themselves as part of this, as well.”

Griffith said CNB’s deal creates opportunities to reach out to some former Bank of Akron customers.

“We have some small to mid-sized businesses right here in town, in Akron and Newstead, businesses of size, that have outgrown the Bank of Akron over the years because of legal lending limitations or lack of scale,” he said. “Those are businesses that Tony (Delmonte, the market executive) and I will be knocking on the door and talking to. Because in most cases, they didn’t leave the Bank of Akron because of service issues. They were actually leaving because they ran out of room to grow or expand.

“Our legal lending capacity takes us to the mid-$40 millions. There’s not a heck of a lot of businesses in Western New York, regardless of size, that borrow more than that on a day-to-day basis.”

Peter F. Smith, chairman of Pennsylvania-based CNB, said he remained confident of the Bank of Akron merger’s prospects, despite the pandemic and its economic devastation.

“I am absolutely convinced we will come out of it stronger than what we entered in,” Smith said. “Somewhere amid all the tragedy – be it personal, health, financial – there’s opportunity. And there’s still a pronounced need for good, solid community banks like CNB and Bank on Buffalo.”

Meanwhile, Bank on Buffalo is moving ahead with plans to open a branch on Hopkins Road in Amherst, an idea the bank put on hold during the merger. Bank on Buffalo hopes to open that location – its 11th – by the end of this year or early next year.

“We’re not done growing,” Griffith said.