LANCASTER, PA-Locally based Fulton Financial Corp. closed on its acquisition of Windsor, NJ-based First Washington Financial Corp., which operates First Washington State Bank and its 16 branches in Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean counties, NJ. The acquisition is valued at approximately $148 million.

First Washington will operate as a separate subsidiary of Fulton Financial as do its 12 other banking affiliates, acquired under earlier merger agreements. In all, Fulton operates 224 banking offices in five states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and Virginia. With the assumption of First Washington's approximately $486 million in assets, Fulton's assets are now about $11.1 billion.

Under the terms of this agreement, First Washington shareholders receive 1.35 shares of Fulton Financial common stock for each First Washington share, based on the closing of Fulton Financial Stock on Dec. 31 at $23.31 a share. It trades on the Nasdaq as FULT.

Fulton's Pennsylvania banking affiliates are locally based Fulton Bank, Lebanon Valley Farmers Bank in Lebanon, Swineford National Bank in Middleburg, Lafayette Ambassador Bank in Easton, Premier Bank in Doylestown and FNB Bank NA in Danville. It also operates Fulton Financial Advisors and Fulton Insurance Services Group here; Dearden Maquire, Weaver and Barrett in West Conshohocken and provides mortgage lending through Fulton Mortgage Co. and Resource Mortgage.