SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — It's just not credit unions that are feeling the pain of mergers, but the banks are too, and conditions are much worse there, maintains the Association of Vermont Credit Unions.
In its weekly newsletter, the AVCU focused on the planned merger this fall of the state's largest and oldest, the $3 billion Chittenden Bank of Burlington, being acquired by a Connecticut bank, Peoples United Financial Inc. to form a $22 billion institution.
With that consolidation, Vermont banks will have withstood a 67% decline in 30 years compared to the CU decrease during the same period of 56%, and "not one of them has been merged into an out-of-state entity," said AVCU.
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Rather, all 31 credit unions in the Green Mountain State "remain Vermont-owned and controlled," said the trade group.
Since 1977, 33 Vermont banks have sold to out-of-state firms including one to a Toronto bank. An executive of the Vermont Bankers Association told a Burlington paper that when he started 30 years ago, "there were 49 banks and now we're under 20."
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