Community bank moves to expand private-client offerings. Ithaca, N.Y.-based Tompkins Trustco has agreed to acquire AM&M Financial Services, a fee-based financial-planning firm headquartered in Pittsford, N.Y., just outside Rochester. Tompkins, a community-bank holding company, says the deal will strengthen its financial-planning and wealth-management capabilities.

AM&M will become a Tompkins subsidiary. The firm’s will pre-deal management team will remain at the helm.

The companies aren’t saying how much Tompkins plans to pay for AM&M. The deal calls for Tompkins to purchase all of AM&M’s outstanding shares, with part due when the deal closes and “additional contingent amounts payable, depending on the operating results of AM&M, during the four years after closing,” according to Tompkins’ 21 November 2005 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The deal is supposed to close early in 2006.

“This acquisition provides a unique opportunity to expand our financial planning and investment services capabilities,” says Tompkins CEO James Byrnes.

AM&M’s president and CEO Russell Achzet calls Tompkins “a quality organization with extensive product and services capabilities that will result in opportunities to better serve our present clients.”

Tompkins operates 35 banking offices in New York markets served by its three subsidiary banks, Tompkins Trust Company, the NAMEBank of Castile and Mahopac National Bank. The banks provide traditional banking services and, through Tompkins Investment Services, money-management services.Tompkins also sells insurance through its Tompkins Insurance Agencies subsidiary.

AM&M provides fee-based financial-planning and wealth-management services through AM&M Planners, and risk-management plans using life, disability and long-term care insurance products through Ensemble Risk Solutions. AM&M also owns Ensemble Financial Services, an independent broker-dealer and a service agency for investment advisors.

Altogether, says Tompkins, AM&M, with 42 employees including its six principals, had about 800 clients and $350 million in assets under management at the end of September 2005. –FWR

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