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Speaking at an event in Boston this week, M&T Bank CEO René Jones predicted more M&A activity in the Northeast – including some driven by his own institution.

Jones credited a friendlier regulatory environment for a potential uptick in merger activity in a “fireside chat” with Eastern Bank Executive Chair Bob Rivers at the Hilton Boston Park Plaza hosted by the Boston College Chief Executives Club Wednesday afternoon.

Eastern Bank is the biggest Boston-based bank, with $25.4 billion in assets.

“I do think you’re going to see a lot of transactions,” he said. “Sometimes, a lot of those transactions lead to another transaction down the road, if they’re reasonable.”

While the regulatory environment might open up merger activity, Jones noted that for M&T Bank, that isn’t the primary reason it enters into these type of deals.

“For us, there aren’t a ton of partners,” he said. “We’ve got to be like-minded, because the integration has to go well. People’s United – just think about it this way, we had 17,000 employees and we added 5,000. If those 5,000 employees don’t have some semblance of the same goal of what you’re trying to do, this is not going to go well.”

M&T Bank made its entry into the Connecticut market in 2022 when it bought Bridgeport-based regional lender People’s United Bank.

Jones added that M&T Bank doesn’t have aspirations of becoming a national institution, which can impact how it views potential M&A deals. Still, the bank is looking to grow deeper in the communities where it already exists.

The New England banking landscape has seen a dozen or more bank mergers proposed or completed in the last 12 months, including several landmark deals.