Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/469117
www.wbjournal.com • Worcester Business Journal 49 25 YEARS: MORPHERS & MERGERS Prepare for Excellence. c o m p e t i t i v e a n d i n no vat i v e . Master's Degrees in Business Anna Maria College's on- ground and online business administration degrees are tailored towards your needs. www.AnnaMaria.edu Celebrating our 80th year in business in Central Mass. • Knowledge • Integrity • Service Saul F. Feingold, CEO Lisa M. Hirbour, Co-President David M. Dimenstein, Co-President Two Chestnut Place 22 Elm Street Worcester, MA 01608 508.831.9500 800.370.1718 Fax: 508.797.4030 C entral Massachusetts has had its fair share of bank mergers over the last quarter-century, resulting in a marked decrease in the number of regional banks based here. Like big fish eating small fish, players such as Bank of America devoured the smaller regional banks. Bank of America, in New England, resulted from its 2004 acquisition of FleetBoston Financial, which itself had resulted from the 1999 merger of Fleet Financial Group and BankBoston. BankBoston, for its part, had been spawned by the mid-'90s merger of BancBoston Holdings and BayBanks. The pre-Fleet-merger version of Bank of America was born of the merg- ers in the early '90s of BankAmerica, Continental Bank and Security Pacific Bancorp. The post-Fleet-merger ver- sion went on to merge with MBNA in 2006 and U.S. Trust in 2007, and with Countrywide Financial in 2008 and Merrill Lynch in 2013. Central Massachusetts still has sev- eral local, independent banks, which include Commerce Bank in Worcester, Avidia Bank in Hudson (itself the result of a 2007 merger between Hudson and Westborough savings banks), Fidelity Co-Operative Bank (branch pictured at right), Middlesex Savings Bank in Natick and UniBank in Whitinsville. UMASS MEDICAL CENTER AND MEMORIAL HEALTH CARE BIG BANKS AND REGIONAL BANKS M emorial Health Care and the clin- ical systems of UMass Medical Center went to the altar in 1998, creat- ing UMass Memorial Health Care. At the time, the marriage of the two health-care systems seemed made in heaven. Sixteen years later, though, the largest health-care system in Central Massachusetts has money troubles. The challenges faced by UMass Memorial Health Care have been no secret, as the Worcester Business Journal has reported. As the region's largest employer, UMass Memorial has about 13,000 people on its payroll and annual revenue of more than $2.2 bil- lion. And it's the parent of four hospi- tals in the region with about 1,000 beds. But recent signs are optimistic that changes UMass Memorial has been making in its operations over the last year are paying off. While the organiza- tion continued to lose money through the first half of the 2014 fiscal year — which ended Sept. 30 — the six-month operating loss was only about $16.5 million.