On September 9, 2016, Northwest Bank, Warren, PA, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Northwest Bancshares, Inc. (“Northwest”), completed its acquisition of 18 bank branches from First Niagara Bank, Buffalo, NY, the wholly-owned subsidiary of First Niagara Financial Group, Inc., which were divested by First Niagara Bank as part of KeyCorp’s acquisition of First Niagara Financial Group, Inc. Pursuant to the Purchase and Sale Agreement, Northwest Bank assumed approximately $1.6 billion in deposits and purchased approximately $460 million of performing loans.

Luse Gorman served as legal counsel to Northwest Bank in the transaction. The Luse Gorman team was led by Eric Luse (Corporate/M&A), Marc Levy (Corporate/M&A) and Beverly White (Executive Compensation), and included Zachary Davis (Corporate/M&A) and Joe Daly (Regulatory).

Prior to the acquisition, Northwest had approximately $8.96 billion in total assets and operated 167 full-service community banking offices and nine free standing drive-thru facilities in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and Maryland, and 51 consumer finance offices in Pennsylvania through its subsidiary, Northwest Consumer Discount Company.