December 12, 2018

On December 11, 2018, Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc. (“Berkshire”), Boston, Massachusetts, the holding company for Berkshire Bank, and SI Financial Group, Inc. (“SIFI”), Willimantic, Connecticut, the holding company for Savings Institute Bank and Trust Company, announced a definitive merger agreement pursuant to which SIFI will merge with and into Berkshire, with Berkshire as the resulting company. SIFI stockholders will receive 0.48 shares of Berkshire’s common stock for each share of SIFI common stock. The total merger consideration is currently valued at approximately $180 million.

Luse Gorman serves as legal counsel to Berkshire in the transaction. The Luse Gorman team consisted of Lawrence M.F. Spaccasi, Marc P. Levy, Megan McKinney (Corporate/M&A), Max Seltzer and Brendan Saxon (Executive Compensation).

This is Luse Gorman’s 22nd bank merger transaction announced in 2018.

Berkshire has approximately $12 billion in total assets and operates 115 full service branches in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

SIFI has approximately $1.6 billion in total assets and operates 23 full service branches in Eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island.