EverBank and WaFd Merge to Form $75 Billion Regional Banking Giant

Florida-based EverBank Financial and Pacific Northwest lender WaFd have agreed to a reverse merger that would create a regional bank with roughly $75 billion in combined assets, landing it among the top 50 U.S. banks by size. The deal is structured as a reverse merger, meaning the smaller WaFd — recently rebranded from Washington Federal Bank and carrying about $28 billion in assets — will remain the publicly traded entity, rename itself EverBank Financial, and trade under the new ticker "EVBK."

The valuation math is notable: EverBank, the larger of the two at ~$47 billion in assets, carries a $3.9 billion valuation versus WaFd's $2.7 billion market cap. EverBank was acquired in 2023 by a consortium of private-equity heavyweights — Stone Point Capital, Warburg Pincus, Reverence Capital Partners, Sixth Street, and Bayview Asset Management — who bought it from pension giant TIAA. That group, along with TIAA which retained a stake, will collectively own roughly 59.2% of the combined company post-close, making the deal an effective PE exit vehicle without a traditional IPO.

Strategically, the two banks fit together like puzzle pieces. EverBank operates primarily as a digital bank with only a few dozen physical branches concentrated in Florida and California. WaFd, headquartered in Seattle, brings a traditional branch network of more than 200 locations spread across Washington, Oregon, and other Western states. EverBank CEO Greg Seibly framed the rationale bluntly: banks need scale to survive, and many institutions are facing the same existential pressure. The geographic and operational complementarity — digital reach plus physical presence — is the core pitch to investors and regulators alike.