Bank Deal’s $867 Million Haircut Exposes 2023’s Lingering Pain

This year’s biggest regional bank merger comes with some big writedowns, underscoring how the impact of high interest rates stubbornly lingers after the industry’s 2023 convulsions.

Columbia Banking System Inc.’s $2 billion stock deal for California lender Pacific Premier Bancorp features plans for $867 million of writedowns to Premier’s loans and securities. That’s partly to crystallize hundreds of millions of dollars in unrealized losses that Pacific Premier racked up by piling into long-dated holdings before the Federal Reserve rate hikes began three years ago.

The deal — which adds Southern California to the footprint of Tacoma, Washington-based Columbia — ...