BankFlorida to be sold to individual investor

BankFlorida in Jupiter is being sold to a private investor.

The $91 million-asset bank has agreed to be sold to Kenneth Lehman, a former banking attorney with a track record of buying big stakes in community banks. Lehman would buy BankFlorida for $10 a share, based on a release from Hovde Group, which is representing the bank.

The deal could be value at $42 million based on the number of shares BankFlorida had planned to sell in an initial public offering it canceled last year.

The bank, formed in 2007, has $69 million in loans and $74 million in deposits.

BankFlorida hired the former management team of Atlantic Coast Financial in June 2018, including John Stephens Jr. as its CEO. The bank lost $555,000 through the first nine months of 2019. It lost $82,000 the prior year.

Lehman, as an individual investor, has invested in several community banks in the eastern United States.

Last year, he bought a 40% stake in the $301 million-asset Sevier County Bancshares in Sevierville, Tenn., and a 50.01% stake in Village Bank & Trust Financial in Midlothian, Va.