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Building relationships with acquisition targets can help a bank become a buyer of choice, potentially avoiding large, competitive auctions and developing an understanding of the seller’s hot-button issues.
In today’s suddenly hot M&A environment, paying up is one surefire way for a bank to make its merger offer stand out. 
But money isn’t everything, veteran dealmakers say, arguing that getting to know a target bank’s leadership early on is vital to understanding what makes them tick.
“Sometimes the highest price isn’t the best deal,” says Carl Carlson, chief financial and strategy officer at Beacon Financial Corp., a Boston-based regional bank with $23 billion in assets.
Carlson oversaw a series of acquisitions starting in the late 1980s for North Fork Bank, which itself would later get bought by Capital One Financial. More recently, he helped shepherd through the merger of equals of Brookline Bancorp and Berkshire Hills Bancorp last year that formed Beacon.
The economics of a deal always have to make sense, Carlson says, but so too do the cultural factors that can make a deal work — or stop it in its tracks.
“At the end of the day, banking is a people business,” Carlson adds.
To learn more about preparing to become a strong bank acquirer, download the report, sponsored by Cantor, here.
