PNC Gets Regulatory OK to Acquire FirstBank

The $4.1 billion deal has now received the go-ahead from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Colorado Division of Banking, PNC said in a Friday (Dec. 12) news release. 

“Final regulatory approval of this acquisition marks an important milestone for PNC as we continue to expand our coast-to-coast franchise and bring our full breadth of capabilities to more customers and communities,” said William S. Demchak, chairman and chief executive officer of PNC. “We look forward to welcoming FirstBank’s employees and clients to PNC.”

PNC said it expects the transaction to close on or about Jan. 5, 2026, pending the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. After closing, PNC will integrate FirstBank into its national platform, including its treasury management, payments, and digital banking capabilities. Full customer conversion is expected to occur in the middle of next year, the release added.

The bank first announced plans to acquire FirstBank, one of the country’s largest privately held lenders, in September. The acquisition “adds meaningful scale to PNC’s presence in the Rocky Mountain region and the Southwest, including Colorado and Arizona,” the release added.

During a quarterly earnings call in October, Demchak said that efforts by federal banking regulators to reduce regulatory burdens and focus on material risks will save banks a lot of full-time equivalents.

Asked by analysts about the possible tailwind banks could realize from these regulatory changes, Demchak said that PNC had not really calculated the amount of time spent on regulators’ matters requiring attention (MRAs) but that he estimates it comes to “hundreds and hundreds” of full-time equivalents (FTEs) and half of the time he spends with the board.

In other banking regulation news, the OCC said last week it plans to continue its regulatory reforms in 2026, with a focus on liquidity risk management, Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (BSA/AML) compliance and community bank regulation.

Speaking at a meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould said these planned reforms will mark a continuation of the work undertaken this year by the OCC, the council and others.

“Taken together, these actions represent an initial, but not sufficient, effort to undo discretionary regulatory and supervisory policy choices made after the 2008 crisis that eroded effective supervision and threatened the relevance of the banking system,” Gould said.