Bank7 has asked the Federal Reserve to approve its purchase of a Santa Fe bank holding company out of a court receivership, and its own $68m bid can still be beaten at auction

The buyer is applying for approval to acquire something it might not end up owning.

Bank7 Corp of Oklahoma City has applied to the Federal Reserve to acquire Century Financial Services Corporation and, through it, Century Bank, both of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Board filed the notice for public inspection on Friday. Comments go to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City or to the Board itself, and they must arrive by 2 September.

The notice itself is four lines long and gives no price. The price is in the company's own filing.

What the 8-K says

Bank7 signed a Stock Purchase Agreement on 1 July with MCA Financial Group, LTD., acting solely as a court-appointed receiver on behalf of a receivership estate created by orders of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. The company agreed to buy 237,136 shares of Century, plus any further shares caught by the receivership, estimated at about 71 percent of the outstanding stock, for $68.0 million in cash.

The shares come free and clear of liens and on an as-is, where-is basis, and Bank7 assumes none of the receivership estate's liabilities. Its board approved the agreement unanimously.

Stalking horse

The agreement is a stalking horse bid, which the filing states in those words. It is the baseline against which other offers are measured. The sale remains subject to higher and better offers under bidding procedures the Court approves, and qualified bids would send the matter to a Court supervised auction.

Bank7 has posted a $7.25 million good-faith deposit, credited to the price if it prevails. If it does not prevail, the receiver owes it a break-up fee of $2.04 million.

The dates that bind

Closing is conditioned on regulatory approvals, and the filing names the Federal Reserve Board specifically among them. Either party may terminate if closing has not occurred by 30 November 2026, subject to exceptions, or if an auction is held and Bank7 is not the successful bidder.

Neither document says why the receivership exists. Neither gives Century Bank's size. Bank7's most recent current report on EDGAR is dated 16 July and concerns its quarterly results, so no auction outcome has been reported to the SEC.