company. The NSW Permanent Building & Investment Society was established in 1939. The society became a bank in 1985 under the name Advance Bank. In 1848, the Savings Bank of South Australia opened for business in Gawler Place, Adelaide, and the organisation which became the State Bank of South Australia opened in rural South Australia. Both were guaranteed by the Government of South Australia. The two banks were merged in 1984 and traded as the State Bank of South Australia, retaining the Government guarantee. After excessive insufficiently secured lending through the 1980s, the bank collapsed, and because of the guarantee, was bailed out by the State Government. In 1992 the bank was split into the "bad bank" with the non-performing debts, and the "good bank". The "good bank" was acquired by the Advance Bank, who kept it operating as a separate entity under the name of the Bank of South Australia, trading as BankSA. Advance Bank (and its BankSA subsidiary) was in turn taken over in 1997 by St.George Bank. Like Advance Bank, St.George has continued to run BankSA as a separate entity – it has 55 branches in metropolitan Adelaide, 66 in rural South Australia (totalling 121 overall in the state, more than any other bank in South Australia), four in the Northern Territory and one in Queensland. On 1 November 2006, St.George Bank posted a net profit of A$1bn for 2005/06, a 17.9% increase on the previous year, and a record profit for the bank. At the time of its acquisition by Westpac in 2008, St.George Bank Limited (as it was then known) was the fifth largest bank operating in Australia. Merger with Westpac On 14 November 2007, Paul Fegan was announced as the new CEO of the St.George Bank, to replace Gail Kelly who had departed on 17 August 2007 to become CEO of Westpac. On 9 May 2008, Westpac and St.George released communications outlining an intention to merge, which was approved by St.George shareholders on 13 November 2008, and upheld by the Australian Federal Court on 17 November 2008. Immediately following the court decision, Paul Fegan announced his resignation as CEO and managing director. St.George, and BankSA, became a subsidiary of Westpac on 1 December 2008. The all-stock deal valued St.George at A$18.6 billion (US$17.5 billion), or A$33.10 a share, a premium of 28.5% to the closing price of St. George shares on 9 May in