By Matthew Monks and Gillian Tan

(Bloomberg) — Bremer Financial Corp., which is based in St. Paul and is Minnesota’s fourth-largest bank by deposits, is for sale, according to people familiar with the matter.

Financial advisers have been retained to find a buyer for the lender, said the individuals, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. While it’s not clear how much it would fetch in a sale, the bank had about $1.35 billion of equity capital as of June 30, according to regulatory filings. Healthy banks tend to change hands at the value of their equity or more.

No final decision has been made and the trust could opt against pursuing a deal, according to the individuals.

Bremer is owned by the Otto Bremer Trust and Bremer employees.

“The Bremer Financial Corporation board of directors and the trustees of the Otto Bremer Trust are currently working together to redefine the relationship between the two organizations. As a policy, Bremer does not comment on rumors or speculation,” a representative for Bremer Financial said in a statement.

A representative for the Otto Bremer Trust said the trustees had no comment.

Bremer comes to market amid a pickup in small and midsize bank mergers, with lenders increasingly seeking scale to better compete with massive rivals such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp.

Bremer is unusual in that it is owned by a charitable trust, which was set up in the 1940s by Otto Bremer, a German immigrant who helped rescue a number of Midwestern US banks during the Great Depression.

A major farm lender, the bank had about $16.3 billion of assets as of June 30, filings show. It was the fourth-largest deposit holder in Minnesota as of June 30, behind U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo & Co. and Ameriprise Financial Inc.’s bank, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The potential sale comes after a five-year legal spat between Otto Bremer Trust and Bremer Financial.

The bank sued members of the trust in 2019 to keep it from selling a stake in the institution to a group of hedge funds, with the alleged purpose of ousting some board members and forcing a full sale of the bank.

They reached an agreement to end all litigation in July.

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