On January 5, 2016, Cape Bancorp, Inc. (“Cape”), Cape May Court House, New Jersey and OceanFirst Financial Corp. (“OceanFirst”), Toms River, New Jersey, announced that they have agreed to merge pursuant to which OceanFirst will acquire Cape for approximately $208.1 million in OceanFirst stock and cash. Upon completion of the merger, Cape Bank, the subsidiary of Cape, will merge into OceanFirst Bank, the subsidiary of OceanFirst. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Cape shareholders will receive $2.25 in cash and 0.6375 shares of OceanFirst common stock for each share of Cape common stock owned. As a result, the overall consideration will be 85% stock and 15% cash.

Luse Gorman represented Cape in the transaction. The Luse Gorman team was led by Eric Luse and Marc Levy (Corporate/M&A), and Beverly White (Executive Compensation), and included Megan McKinney and Zachary Davis (Corporate/M&A).

OceanFirst has approximately $2.6 billion in total assets and operates 27 branches located in Ocean, Monmouth and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey.

Cape has approximately $1.6 billion in total assets and operates 22 full-service banking centers and five loan offices throughout southern New Jersey and the Philadelphia metropolitan area.