Customers Bank of Wyomissing, with a presence in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., is entering the New England market with the acquisition of all of the New England commercial banking business from Flagstar Bank of Michigan.

"The best part of this transaction is that we have recruited a team of very experienced New England bankers that are led by veteran Fleet and Sovereign banker Steve Issa. I worked with Steve for many years at Sovereign and am delighted to have him join our top management team as president of this newly created Customers Bank – New England Division," said Jay Sidhu, chairman and CEO of Customers Bank.

"We plan to be very aggressive and competitive in serving the privately held businesses in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island," Sidhu said. "We will have an exceptional team and have a goal to prudently grow this business to over $1 billion in outstanding [loans] over the next few years."

As part of the transaction, Customers Bank is acquiring total banking relationships with many high quality New England businesses that have loans outstanding totaling about $151 million and commitments of about $190 million. No classified or problem loans are included in the purchase. The purchase price is 98.7 percent of loans outstanding.

Customers Bank proforma has about $4 billion in assets. It has two acquisitions of banks pending that it plans to close in the first half of 2013.