BMO Completes Sale of 138 US Branches to First-Citizens Bank

The transaction reduces BMO's US retail footprint while expanding First-Citizens Bank's branch network, continuing a broader trend of mid-market US banking consolidation.

Bank of Montreal's US subsidiary has finalized the divestiture of 138 branches to First-Citizens BancShares, according to a Yahoo Finance report published September 7, 2026. The completion of the deal marks a significant restructuring of BMO's American retail presence.

BMO entered the US market at scale in 2023 when it acquired San Francisco-based Bank of the West from BNP Paribas for approximately $16.3 billion, a figure disclosed in BMO's fiscal 2023 annual report filed with Canadian regulators. That acquisition added roughly 500 branches across the western and midwestern United States to BMO's network.

The sale of 138 branches to First-Citizens represents a reduction of more than one-quarter of the branch count BMO inherited through the Bank of the West deal, based on the publicly reported figures from that transaction. The precise geographic distribution of the divested branches, and which states are affected, was not specified in the available source material. A full list of affected locations would be disclosed in regulatory filings submitted to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve.

First-Citizens BancShares, headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, has pursued an active acquisition strategy in recent years. The bank assumed deposits and loans of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023 through an FDIC-assisted transaction, a deal the FDIC announced on March 27, 2023. The addition of 138 BMO branches extends that expansion into conventional retail banking real estate.

Branch divestitures of this scale require regulatory approval from US banking authorities, including the Federal Reserve and the OCC, under the Bank Merger Act. The agencies review whether the transaction preserves competition in local deposit markets and assess the financial condition of the acquiring institution. The completion of the sale indicates those reviews have concluded without blocking conditions, though the specific terms of regulatory approval were not included in the available source material.

For BMO, the divestiture aligns with a pattern seen among large foreign-owned US banking subsidiaries that have trimmed branch footprints following large acquisitions. Operating costs per branch at US retail banks averaged approximately $2.5 million annually as of 2023, according to data compiled by the FDIC in its annual Summary of Deposits report. Reducing a network by 138 branches therefore carries material implications for the acquirer's ongoing non-interest expense base.

Deposit competition in US retail banking has intensified since the Federal Reserve began raising its benchmark federal funds rate in March 2022, a cycle that ended when the Fed began cutting rates in September 2024 per Federal Reserve meeting minutes. Higher funding costs during that period compressed net interest margins at retail-focused banks and increased the strategic pressure to rationalize branch networks.

The financial terms of the BMO to First-Citizens branch sale, including any deposit premiums paid and the total loan balances transferred, were not disclosed in the source material. Those figures would appear in each institution's next quarterly call report filed with the FDIC, which is a public document submitted within 30 days of each quarter's end.

For customers at the 138 affected branches, branch sales of this type typically result in account relationships transferring automatically to the acquiring institution under the terms of the purchase and assumption agreement. The timeline for any customer-facing changes in branding or services was not available in the source material.

First-Citizens BancShares reported total assets of approximately $220 billion as of its most recent 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, making it one of the largest regional banks in the United States by asset size. The addition of 138 branches would expand its deposit-gathering infrastructure and geographic reach, though the precise asset and deposit volumes attached to the acquired branches were not disclosed in available reports.