Its parent company, First Niagara Financial Group, Inc. was the 44th-largest bank in the United States with assets of over $37.1 billion as of June 30, 2013.

[7] In September 2007, it was announced that First Niagara was to purchase Great Lakes Bancorp, parent company of Greater Buffalo Savings Bank.

With the nearly $900 million of assets of the Great Lakes Bancorp, First Niagara became the fourth largest bank in the Buffalo-Niagara region [1] [2] Archived 2007-10-23 at the Wayback Machine.

[10] 18 branches in Erie and Niagara Counties were sold to Northwest Savings Bank for antitrust reasons.

[11] On April 7, 2009, First Niagara agreed to buy 57 National City branches in Western Pennsylvania from PNC Financial Services[12] and officially took over those branches on September 8 after the signs were changed over from National City during Labor Day Weekend.

(Even after the sale was completed, PNC retained a market-leading 46% share in the Pittsburgh market, with Citizens Financial Group in a distant second at 13%.

)[12] A dark horse candidate, the sale to First Niagara was considered a surprise, considering that PNC was also in negotiations with much larger banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bank, KeyBank, Huntington Bancshares, and FNB Corporation for the branches.

[16] Fifth Third, Huntington, & FNB had existing branches in the market, while JPMorgan Chase's retail banking division & Key were in adjacent territories, and Wells Fargo was in the process of expanding its Eastern U.S. operations by way of its acquisition of Wachovia.

First Niagara maintained all Harleysville National and East Penn branches, and the Pennsylvania company's growing commercial banking and wealth-management business.

Investors had complained that HSBC had spread itself too thinly, with roughly 95 million customers and 300,000 employees in 87 markets.

As a result of the acquisition, the United States Department of Justice required First Niagara to divest itself of 26 branches.