Independent community banking organizations, like German American Bancorp (GAB), play a unique role in the communities they serve. Community bankers channel most of their loans to the neighborhoods where their depositors live and work, helping to keep local communities vibrant and growing. They are intimately involved in local community affairs, and offer nimble decision-making on business loans.

For over 20 years, we have served as legal advisors to the leadership team at GAB. In the early 1980s, the bank's assets were less than $200 million and it had banking offices in and around Jasper, Indiana, a prosperous city of strong German American heritage that is the wood furniture capital of the world. Through multiple mergers with other community banks over the years and internal growth, GAB now boasts over $1 billion of total assets held by its six community banking affiliates with offices throughout much of southern Indiana. Its stock is now traded on NASDAQ's Global Select Market under the symbol GABC.

Comprehensive legal services provided by Ice Miller to GAB include assisting management in negotiating mergers and acquisitions and other strategic transactions, capital management transactions (public and private securities offerings, stock repurchases and self tender offers), regulatory compliance, lending transactions, securities law compliance, corporate governance and compensation matters, employee benefit and human resources matters, intellectual property protection, non-banking products and services such as investments and insurance, tax planning, and litigation.

With its successful strategic growth plan, German American Bancorp has retained its southern Indiana heritage and community banking commitment with the financial performance and services of a much larger organization.