First Busey Corp. Completes CrossFirst Bankshares Inc. Acquisition

Posted March 3, 2025

First Busey Corporation has officially closed its acquisition of Leawood-based CrossFirst Bankshares Inc., worth nearly $917 million.

The transaction officially closed on March 1.

Busey will operate CrossFirst Bank as a separate banking subsidiary of Busey until it is merged with Busey Bank, expected to be completed by June 2025. Upon completion of the merger, CrossFirst banking centers will become branches of Busey Bank and operate under the Busey brand.

The merged bank will serve clients from 77 locations across 10 states with combined total assets of approximately $20 billion, $17 billion in total deposits, $15 billion in total loans and $14 billion in wealth assets under care.

Former CrossFirst shareholders own approximately 36.5% of the combined company, according to a Monday release.

“Taking our organization to new heights, this partnership combines our growing commercial bank with the power of Busey’s core deposit franchise, exceptional wealth management platform and the impressive payment tech solutions at FirsTech Inc.,” former CrossFirst CEO Mike Maddox said in a release. “We firmly believe our strong metro market footprint, commercial focus and growth potential will help elevate the combined company to be a leading regional banking institution throughout the Midwest and Southwestern regions of the U.S.”

Maddox will now serve the combined company as vice chairman and president of Busey and president and CEO of Busey Bank. Maddox was recently named Ingram’s 2025 Executive of the Year in Ingram’s January 2025 edition. He will assume the role of CEO of the holding company sometime next year.

The holding company will be headquartered in the current CrossFirst Bank headquarters, located at 11440 Tomahawk Creek Pkwy. Busey Bank’s headquarters will remain in Champaign, Illinois.

“Over the past few years, we have been keenly focused on maintaining Busey’s fortress balance sheet—featuring exceptional credit quality, strong liquidity, excess capital and diversified revenue streams buttressed by our wealth management and payments processing businesses—to be well positioned to capitalize on a financially and strategically compelling opportunity of size and scale,” Chairman and CEO of Busey and Chairman of Busey Bank, Van Dukeman, said in the release. “This is that opportunity and we look forward to fully integrating our banks while leveraging the talent, expertise, increased scale and market presence to benefit our Pillars.”