After reading the different analyst reports and looking at the economy I sincerely hope Mr. Zollars and Mr. Smid are considering waiting on the merger.

I am in no way suggesting that they not go through with it, since, it will position the company very nicely for the future. However, every analyst I have read stated that doing a merger of this size while the economy is slow is a huge mistake.

They all have pointed out that the merger will result in some loss of customers through disruption of service.The consensus seems to be between 5% and 15%.Their point is that a busy company can better tolerate that kind of loss to the bottom line than a slow one.

I hope that they will also consider the state of the economy when they made the decision to merge and what it has become.