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A New Chapter for Local Banking
HOW BEACON BANK IS STRENGTHENING— AND SCALING UP— WHAT A COMMUNITY BANK CAN DO FOR THE BERKSHIRES
When Berkshire Bank’ s green signs quietly changed to Beacon Bank, the Berkshires braced for a familiar story: a homegrown institution swallowed by something bigger and even more removed. In fact, going bigger is bringing the bank closer to its roots. The merger, driven by CEO Paul Perrault, has strengthened the bank’ s local focus, creating a regional institution that maintains a hometown, neighborhood feel.
“ We’ re building a bank that’ s just big enough to matter, and still small enough to know its towns,” Perrault says.
On paper, the numbers look every bit the classic consolidation story. Boston-based Brookline Bancorp( the parent company of Brookline Bank, BankRI, and PCSB Bank) merged with Pittsfield-born Berkshire Hills Bancorp( the parent company of Berkshire Bank). Before combining, both legacy parent companies held nearly equal size, with Berkshire Bank at roughly $ 12 billion in assets and Brookline Bancorp at $ 11.6 billion, totaling around $ 24 billion for the newly formed entity and 145 branches and commercial financial centers across five states.
For Perrault, those headline figures are almost secondary because the regulatory threshold held fast.“ The big regulatory threshold is $ 10 billion,” he notes during a one-on-one conversation. Both banks were already over that line, and already living under federal supervision.“ Going to $ 24 billion didn’ t change that math.”
What did change was that the bank can be more effective in places like the Berkshires, and Perrault was just the person who could make that happen. He built a career spanning nearly four decades as a banking executive across New England and the Northeast, leading mid-sized
64 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Fall 2026