Bank of the West’s acquisition of bank OK’d

SAN FRANCISCO—Bank of the West, a subsidiary of BancWest Corporation, announced yesterday that it has received notification from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that its application to acquire Commercial Federal Bank, an Omaha, Nebraska-based federal savings bank, has been approved.

The FDIC also approved the merger of Commercial Federal Corporation (NYSE:CFB) into Bank of the West.

The Office of Thrift Supervision and the California Department of Financial Institutions have already given their approval. Commercial Federal shareholders are scheduled to vote on the combination Nov. 1, 2005.

Bank of the West and Commercial Federal Bank announced their intention to merge on June 13, 2005. The transaction is expected to close in December 2005.

The resulting institution will operate 681 Bank of the West banking locations in 19 Western and Midwestern states. San Francisco-based Bank of the West expects to have assets after the transaction of $54 billion.

About Commercial Federal Corporation

Commercial Federal Corporation (NYSE:CFB) is the parent company of Commercial Federal Bank (www.comfedbank.com), a $10.4-billion federal savings bank founded in Omaha in 1887. It has 198 branches in Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arizona. Commercial Federal operations include consumer and commercial banking services, including retail banking, commercial and industrial lending, small business banking, construction lending, cash management, and insurance and investment services.

Bank of the West (www.bankofthewest.com), which is based in San Francisco, has $42 billion in assets. It has 477 banking locations in 16 Western and Midwestern states: California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin. Founded in San Jose, California in 1874 as Farmers National Gold Bank, Bank of the West is the fourth-largest commercial bank headquartered west of the Mississippi.

BancWest Corporation (www.bancwestcorp.com) is a bank holding company with assets of $52.6 billion and headquarters offices in Honolulu, Hawaii, and San Francisco, California. Besides Bank of the West, BancWest’s other principal subsidiary is First Hawaiian Bank (56 branches in Hawaii, three in Guam and two in Saipan). BancWest is a wholly owned subsidiary of BNP Paribas (www.bnpparibas.com), a European leader in banking and financial services, with a significant and growing presence in the United Sates and leading positions in Asia. The most profitable bank in the Euro zone, it has a presence in over 85 countries with close to 100,000 employees. (PR)