Fifth Third Bancorp will look more closely at buying rival banks in 2012 as one way to use its excess capital, Chief Financial Officer Daniel Poston said on Wednesday.The Midwestern bank is the latest regional lender to signal it may purchase smaller competitors in 2012, as low interest rates squeeze lending margins and low loan demand makes it tough for banks to boost their loan books.Fifth Third will examine deals between $3 billion and $10 billion in size, Poston said at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch financial services conference.Smaller deals, Poston said, would not make sense because any transactions "have to be large enough to justify the effort."
Fifth Third Bancorp (the Bancorp) is a diversified financial services company. Shares of FITB fell by 0.42% or $-0.05/share to $11.91. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $9.13 and as high as $15.75. On average, 16936900 shares of FITB exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 2301687.
