While executives at the Buffalo, N.Y., bank said they would take a closer look at spending, especially given the potential for interest rate cuts, they described investments in tech talent as an essential cost of doing business.
When M&T Bank was acquiring Wilmington Trust in 2011, it tapped into Abigail Mrozinski's deep understanding of its newly added wealth business to help the merger go smoothly.
Total loans fell, but earnings soared thanks to wider margins, a smaller loan provision and fewer legal costs now that the Wilmington Trust probe is settled.
Attorneys for then President Robert Harra said he is innocent and will file an appeal. The case centers on a scheme said to have been carried out during the crisis years, before the bank was sold to M&T.
A $135 million increase in litigation expenses related to its 2011 acquisition of Wilmington Trust overshadowed a wider net interest margin and improved credit quality for the Buffalo, N.Y., company in the first quarter.
Robert Wilmers joined M&T in 1983 when it had just $2 billion of assets and built into a regional powerhouse with $120 billion of assets and operations in a dozen states.
