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SunTrust Banks, Inc. was an American bank holding company with SunTrust Bank as its largest subsidiary and assets of US$199 billion as of March 31, 2018. The bank's most direct corporate parent was established in 1891 in Atlanta, where it was headquartered.
As of September 2016, SunTrust Bank operated 1,400 bank branches and 2,160 ATMs across 11 southeastern states and Washington, D.C. The bank's primary businesses included deposits, lending, credit cards, and trust and investment services. Through its various subsidiaries, the company provided corporate and investment banking, capital market services, mortgage banking, and wealth management — with nearly 24,000 employees. In 2013, it was ordered to pay $1.5 billion "to resolve claims of shoddy mortgage lending, servicing and foreclosure practices," and it reached a preliminary $968 Million settlement with the US government in 2014.
In February 2019, SunTrust Banks announced its pending purchase by BB&T for $28 billion in an all-stock deal, creating the sixth largest U.S. lender, being the biggest bank deal since the 2008 financial crisis. On December 6, 2019, the merger between BB&T and SunTrust closed, forming Truist Financial.
In November 1893, it restructured as a trust company and renamed itself Trust Company of Georgia.
In the early 1980s, the bank pursued further mergers, positioning itself for the state of Florida to eventually allow interstate banking. It incorporated 81-year-old Hillsboro Bank, based in Plant City, an institution with $150 million in assets and then the third-oldest state-chartered bank. It also bought Florida State Bank of Tallahassee, with which it had tried to merge with in 1973, when the economy soured.
In May 1983, Sun announced a deal for Miami-based Flagship Bank Inc., with $3.3 billion in assets, that positioned Sun to be one of the Florida's largest bank holding companies. The Flagship deal was the seventh struck by Sun in less than a year.
The newly merged company made its first major deal a year later, when it purchased Third National Corporation of Nashville. However, it continued to use the Third National name in Tennessee. In 1995, SunTrust retired the Trust Company Bank, Sun Bank and Third National names and rebranded all of its banking subsidiaries as SunTrust.
SunTrust purchased Crestar Bank of Richmond, Virginia in 1998, expanding the company's footprint into Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Crestar was founded in 1865 as State Planters Bank of Commerce and Trusts in 1865, becoming United Virginia Bank in 1969 and Crestar in 1987. Crestar's (and SunTrust's) earliest predecessor, Farmers Bank of Alexandria, was founded in 1811.
In 1988, Suntrust was added to the S&P 500 Stock Price Index.
In 2001, SunTrust purchased the institutional businesses of the Robinson-Humphrey Company, LLC. creating SunTrust Robinson-Humphrey.
The company bought Memphis-based National Commerce Financial Corporation (NCF) for $7 billion in 2004. The bank operated as National Bank of Commerce in South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, and West Virginia and as Central Carolina Bank and Trust in North Carolina. This acquisition allowed SunTrust to enter Alabama, the Carolinas, and West Virginia for the first time, and substantially increased its footprint in the other states.
In 2013, the bank led a bank group that included Fifth Third Bank and Florida Community Bank that helped finance the acquirement of BEL USA, the parent company that owns DiscountMugs, by Comvest Partners, a private equity firm.
In 2014, SunTrust announced it would launch a medical specialty group to work with independent medical practices.
On September 16, 2014, the Atlanta Braves announced the name of their new Cobb County stadium: SunTrust Park. SunTrust Park, which opened for the 2017 season as their new home. The $1.1 billion construction project in Cobb County included The Battery Atlanta, a district of restaurants, shops, offices, a hotel, and residential spaces directly connected to the park, all built during the construction of stadium itself. The name SunTrust Park was used until the 2020 season when it was renamed Truist Park.
The firm was founded as a municipal bond shop by Roby Robinson in 1894. Robinson and William G. Humphrey, a bond trader from Toledo, Ohio, eventually incorporated The Robinson-Humphrey Co. in 1902. It blossomed into the leading investment banking firm in the South under Chairman Justus Martin Jr., who helped broaden its ties to Atlanta corporations, European clients and the firm's wealthy families who were brokerage clients. Martin was at the helm when Robinson-Humphrey commissioned the building of the bold Atlanta Financial Center in city's tony Buckhead business district in the early 1980s.
In 1982, Martin sold Robinson-Humphrey to American Express, which was then run by another Atlanta deal maker and fellow Georgia Tech grad, James Robinson (no relation to Roby Robinson). Under AmEx, the firm operated as part of Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc. In 1993, deal maker Sandy Weill orchestrated a deal for Shearson's retail division, and Robinson-Humphrey was included in the sale, using the Smith Barney unit of Primerica Corp.
The merger closed on December 6, 2019. On that day, SunTrust Bank merged into BB&T's banking unit, Branch Banking and Trust Company, forming Truist Bank as the merged company's legal banking entity. However, the merged bank will continue to operate under the BB&T and SunTrust names until the two banks' systems are combined, a process that could take up to two years. Customers of either company will be able to use the other's ATMs without charge during the process.
As of September 2016, SunTrust Bank operates 1,400 bank branches and 2,160 ATMs across including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The bank announced in 2018 that it will close its last five West Virginia branches, all in Kroger stores.
| William H. Rogers Jr. | Chairman, President and CEO | 2011 – 2019 |
| James M. Wells III | Chairman, President and CEO | 2007 – 2011 |
| L. Phillip Humann | Chairman, President and CEO | 1998 – 2007 |
| James B. "Jimmy" Williams | Chairman, President and CEO | 1990 – 1998 |
| Robert M. Strickland | Chairman/SunTrust; president of Trust Company in 1973 | 1978 – 1990 |
On April 21, 2011, William H. Rogers Jr., began a transition into the CEO role previously held by Jim Wells, who retired December 31, 2011. Formerly SunTrust's COO, Rogers assumed the title of CEO on June 1, 2011. Rogers had been named President in 2008. At that time, the current Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is Aleem Gillani was named in April 2011.
In 2015 and 2016, two corporate treasurers have gone on to become CFOs at large regional banks, including Kevin Blair at Zions Bancorporation and Paul Burdiss at Synovus, and a unit strategy head, Inder M. Singh, became CFO at IT firm Unisys.
As a result, SunTrust owned 48.3 million shares (3.58%) of Coke as of 2006, which had a GAAP cost basis of $110,000. In addition, the original copy of the formula for Coca-Cola was stored in a safe deposit box of an eventual SunTrust location in Atlanta (originally a Trust Company Bank location) from 1925 to 2011. It was eventually moved to a purpose built vault in the World of Coca-Cola, also in Atlanta.
Over the years, Coca-Cola executives would sit on SunTrust's board of directors and SunTrust execs would sit on Coca-Cola's board.
SunTrust started to divest Coke shares in May 2007, when it sold 4.5 million, or 9% of its position. In 2008, the bank sold another 10 million shares, donated 3.6 million to SunTrust's charitable foundation, and crafted a plan to sell more shares in 2014 and 2015.
However, in September 2012, SunTrust sold all of its Coke shares at the behest of its primary regulator, the Federal Reserve. SunTrust was forced to resubmit its capital plan – known as Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) – after it failed part of the stress test in March 2012. The Coke shares (or any stock holding) held by SunTrust would weigh on the bank's capital ratio under new capital rules within Basel III. Thus, SunTrust decided to accelerate its plan and sold the Coke shares earlier than expected.
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