Over the past decade, Maryland’s banking landscape has been transformed, as out-of-state banks, through mergers, acquisitions and expansions, now command the lion’s share of the market. The latest big example: the $6 billion acquisition this year of longtime Baltimore banking institution Mercantile Bankshares Corp. by PNC Financial Services Group of Pittsburgh.

Overall, the number of non-Maryland banks with deposits in the state has almost doubled to 37 in the past decade, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. figures.

This radical shift means changes for local business customers.

Major banks’ decision-making is moving outside Maryland, said banking analyst Bert Ely, owner of Ely & Co. in Alexandria, Va. And similar mergers have resulted in some customers and employees transferring to homegrown banks, he said.

‘‘Both PNC and Mercantile are good companies,” Ely said. ‘‘But not everybody does things the same way. Some companies will find PNC better to deal with, but others won’t.”

Consolidation almost always comes with mergers, Ely said. PNC filed notice of some 450 layoffs in offices in Linthicum, Baltimore and Frederick a few months ago; executives said most were in back-office functions, not frontline positions such as tellers.

Some branches, including a former PNC branch in Beltsville that was close to a Mercantile one, have also been consolidated. PNC now has 195 branches in Maryland — down from the 203 that PNC had in June, according to the FDIC.

While the job losses on the surface are not good for the local economy, the entry of PNC into the Baltimore market might generate some substantial dividends for local businesses in providing more lending opportunities, said Anirban Basu, chairman and CEO of the Sage Policy Group, a Baltimore economic and policy consulting firm.

‘‘PNC is known for its corporate commercial lending,” Basu said. ‘‘Businesses here have another large bank to do business with.”

Bigger banks can offer more sophisticated services

Former business customers of Mercantile should not be hurt by the PNC acquisition, said Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

‘‘If anything, they may find that PNC can offer a broader range of more sophisticated services,” Morici said.

Clients have greeted the changeover favorably, said Kenneth C. Cook, PNC’s greater Washington, D.C., regional CEO for commercial banking. The large majority of former Mercantile employees are working for PNC, including Cook, who was president of Mercantile Potomac Bank and Potomac Valley Bank — which Mercantile acquired.

PNC customers have access to better technology than Mercantile offered, with more services such as remote deposit, Cook said. Remote deposit allows businesses to make deposits online.

‘‘That saves them a lot of time,” Cook said. ‘‘It can take 30 to 40 minutes to drive to a branch in this traffic.”

PNC also has expertise in certain areas that Mercantile was not as deep in, such as defense contracting lending, Cook said.

‘‘PNC has helped my existing clients get new loans and brought in new clients,” he said.

PNC is making inroads in the community by sponsoring events with chambers of commerce, such as last week’s panel discussion on economic conditions that also involved the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. PNC also committed to donate $25 million to a charitable foundation in the Baltimore area.

The bank works with small and large customers, with many in the range of $5 million to $15 million, Cook said.

‘‘It’s about getting them to the right advisers who can meet their needs,” he said. ‘‘People want to deal with people they trust. I have the same people working for me and the same clients. We can give them greater convenience, along with the better technology.”

Locally based bankspoised to gain

Provident Bank, which dates back in Maryland 120 years, has received calls from former Mercantile business customers who value the local ties and want to see what it can offer, said Stephen K. Heine, Provident’s executive vice president for consumer and business banking.

And other former senior Mercantile managers have joined local banks besides Heine, a former Mercantile senior executive who signed on with Provident earlier this year. A key reason for joining Provident was to remain with a Maryland bank, Heine said.

Provident can provide clients with more intimate, targeted knowledge of the local market and personalized service than can larger, out-of-state banks, he said. The bank has unveiled a local marketing and advertising campaign that stresses its longtime Maryland roots.

‘‘Local still matters to business customers and people in Maryland,” Heine said. ‘‘We are small enough to develop relationships and provide more tailored services, but big enough to offer the products and services that the bigger banks do.”

For instance, Provident was one of the first banks in Maryland to introduce remote deposit to its customers about a year ago, he said.

Mary Moslander, president and CEO of LiveHealthier, a 10-employee company in Rockville that operates a subscription-based health Web site, switched to EagleBank, a growing community bank with headquarters in Bethesda, from a larger non-Maryland institution a few months ago.

‘‘I absolutely wanted a bank that was local, knew me, took the time to learn about my business and my specific needs and would find ways to be a true business partner,” Moslander said.

In more than two years with the bigger, out-of-state bank, she didn’t have a good relationship with an individual there. But after meeting some EagleBank executives during a Women in Business conference last year, Moslander made the switch and has quickly developed close relationships with numerous executives, she said.

‘‘It has been an absolute home run, and I just wished I had switched sooner,” Moslander said.

The smaller community banks can understand the needs of smaller businesses better, said Paul Joegriner, co-CEO of American Partners Bank, a Bethesda institution that has seen its deposits grow to $127.5 million in June from about $10 million five years ago.

One client who bought an insurance agency didn’t have overwhelming net worth but had two decades of experience in managing insurance agencies, Joegriner noted.

‘‘She gave us a good business plan and offered a life insurance policy as security,” he said. ‘‘That’s the kind of risk a small bank will take. But a big bank, all they will look at it is a credit score.”

Even with its growth, Joegriner acknowledged that American Partners, which has a Germantown branch, ‘‘would not turn down an opportunity” to be a partner with another institution.

Staff Writer Steve Monroecontributed to this report.

Large in-state banks are vanishing

A decade ago, half of the eight largest banks in deposits in Maryland were headquartered in the state. Today, there is onlyone — Provident Bank.

2007

1996

* in billions of dollars

** PNC acquired Mercantile in 2007; market share figures are combined for June 2007