Atlanta’s SunTrust to merge with BB&T, shift HQ to Charlotte (Columbus: 2013, mortgages)

[Charlotte485]

Originally Posted by citidata18

The bolded is an example of what I was getting at earlier.

This economic loss should inspire Georgia to look into ways to to improve its tax code so we can be on a more competitive footing going forward.

And yes, I agree about SunTrust Plaza. All signs are pointing in that direction.

A race to the bottom?

[citidata18]

The SunTrust-BB&T Merger Could Be Bad News For Atlanta's Economic Future


https://www.bisnow.com/atlanta/news/...medium=Browser

“...BB&T will continue to invest as long as Atlanta is a booming market for them. [But] it's going to be much more around the numbers versus necessarily just the fact that [Atlanta was] its headquarters,” said Joel Prius, a senior director for bank consulting firm Cornerstone Advisors. “Atlanta is no longer the headquarters. It's just another market..."

...Neither BB&T nor SunTrust has yet to detail how many layoffs or branch closures will occur, if any. But the companies expect the merger will lead to $1.6B in annual cost reductions by 2022...

...The job impact may be bigger on Atlanta than Charlotte both in terms of initial cuts and future hiring. The new bank will be more inclined to increase payroll at its headquarters than in Atlanta, Georgia Tech's Scheller College of Business Professor of Finance Sudheer Chava said. There also is a big overlap in bank branches in Georgia, with BB&T operating 137 locations to SunTrust's 229, Chava said. “Charlotte has kind of regained its status [as a banking capital]," CCIM Institute Chief Economist KC Conway said. “There's just a ton of technicals that go with that when you go to Charlotte and not Atlanta...”

...Experts say it could take time to feel the full brunt of losing SunTrust. But it could be felt in everything from the ability by local developers to grab preferable financing for projects, to charities and nonprofits receiving donations and support from a hometown benefactor.

While few expect getting loans from the new bank will be more difficult for the average consumer, getting grand development projects from blueprints to reality with the help of SunTrust loans may get harder. Esperance Private Equity Managing Partner Robin Lee Allen said by 2020, he would not be surprised to see SunTrust decrease loan origination for Atlanta projects and companies, but not by a huge amount...

...“The loss of a major bank like that … has implications for financing big things,” Conway said. “It's important to preserve these large banks in your market. They get things done.”

That is the beauty of having a major bank headquartered in a local city, Prius said. It wants to be a player in the local market, versus just another lender.


"It's a driver behind being able to support the growth [of a community] and provide those financial services,” Prius said. “The bank's ability to fund those projects as well as take on some of the risks and some of the projects that may not be totally clear as far as [their] ability to succeed … might be more along the lines of, 'We need to do this for the local market, and it's an acceptable risk...'”

[citidata18]

BB&T and SunTrust Merger Deals a Blow to Atlanta

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj...ta-11549713601

...Near the bank’s headquarters Thursday, taxi driver Negassi Tekie waited for a fare. He said the downtown cabbies get many customers from SunTrust Plaza, often bank employees or business people visiting bank offices.

“Always our eyes were on that building,” he said. “It’s no good for us and it’s no good for the city also.”

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by citidata18

The SunTrust-BB&T Merger Could Be Bad News For Atlanta's Economic Future

While few expect getting loans from the new bank will be more difficult for the average consumer, getting grand development projects from blueprints to reality with the help of SunTrust loans may get harder. Esperance Private Equity Managing Partner Robin Lee Allen said by 2020, he would not be surprised to see SunTrust decrease loan origination for Atlanta projects and companies, but not by a huge amount...

...“The loss of a major bank like that … has implications for financing big things,” Conway said. “It's important to preserve these large banks in your market. They get things done.”

That is the beauty of having a major bank headquartered in a local city, Prius said. It wants to be a player in the local market, versus just another lender.


https://www.bisnow.com/atlanta/news/...medium=Browser

There is some truth in that. Back when we were trying to get our business started we went down to the Trust Company and the man gave us a loan based on little more than a handshake and high hopes. We put up everything we had but it honestly didn't amount to much. He said you could look people in the eye and decide whether they were going to pay you back and that was more important than all the paperwork in the world. We paid back every penny with interest and wound up borrowing more money from them over the years and recommending them to a lot of other people.

Whether that would happen to day I don't know, although it's probably unlikely. However, dealing with local folks on a face to face basis does make a difference.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by citidata18

The SunTrust-BB&T Merger Could Be Bad News For Atlanta's Economic Future


https://www.bisnow.com/atlanta/news/...medium=Browser

Originally Posted by citidata18

BB&T and SunTrust Merger Deals a Blow to Atlanta

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj...ta-11549713601

Buck up there, my friend.

The BB&T/SunTrust merger probably is a significant blow to Atlanta's civic pride more than anything else... That's probably just for the simple fact that Atlanta has lost its last remaining major bank headquarters to a direct regional economic and civic competitor in Charlotte... Which is a city that has taken all of Atlanta's previous major bank headquarters over about a 35-year period.

Near the end of the Bisnow article that you linked to, Kris Miller, President of Atlanta-based commercial and medical developer Ackerman & Company, acknowledged how sad it is to lose a Fortune 500 headquarters.

But Miller noted that the function of extending credit out to developers and businesses really has little to do with where a bank's headquarters is housed, but is ultimately about the strength of the market where the request for credit is being made.

“Atlanta is an extremely creditworthy city because we have a lot of [momentum] here,” Miller said.

Rival banks will look to take advantage of this in an attempt to grab more market share. But experts say BB&T and SunTrust will want to preserve their business in Atlanta and the other cities where they operate.

“BB&T is not going to squander that advantage that SunTrust had," Emory University's Goizueta Business School Associate Professor Thomas Smith said. "Otherwise, why merge?”

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/atlanta/news/...medium=Browser

From 1985 to 1996, Atlanta lost three major bank headquarters to Charlotte (four if you count Augusta-based First Georgia Bank) and has (with the exception of the Great Recession steep economic downturn) continued to grow and prosper.

(> Atlanta-based First Atlanta Bank was acquired by then Winston-Salem based Wachovia (which is now the East Coast base of Wells Fargo) in 1985...

> Augusta-based First Georgia Bank was acquired by Charlotte-based First Union Bank (later Wachovia and Wells Fargo) in 1986...

> Atlanta-based C&S/Sovran was notably acquired by Charlotte-based North Carolina National Bank (later NationsBank and Bank of America) as it constructed its new 55-story bank tower in Midtown Atlanta in 1992...

> Atlanta-based Bank South Corporation was acquired by Charlotte-based NationsBank (later Bank of America) in 1995-1996.)

Much like with what happened after previous major bank mergers and acquisitions that saw major Atlanta and Georgia-based banks swallowed up by major Charlotte and North Carolina-based banks in the '80's and '90's when newly-formed North Carolina-based megabanks like Wachovia, First Union, NationsBank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo continued to do very high volumes of business in Atlanta; Atlanta will continue to enjoy a robust level of credit availability and investment from the new Charlotte-based BB&T/SunTrust megabank... That is because Atlanta is a fast-growing population center that will continue to be a major (massive) hub of economic activity for the Southeastern U.S.

The previous high-profile acquisitions of Georgia-based banks by North Carolina-based banks seemingly had the potential to be "bad news for Atlanta's economic future" but they were not.

That is because a major part of the motivation for the acquisitions of Atlanta-based banks by North Carolina-based banks has been to do more business and be even more of a dominant force in the very fast-growing Atlanta market, not withdraw from it.

[Need4Camaro]

It will 'hurt'... but it's not the end of Atlanta and definitely isn't something that is considered unrecoverable in economic terms especially given Atlanta's focus is not in the banking industry.

[Atlwarrior]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

Buck up there, my friend.

The BB&T/SunTrust merger probably is a significant blow to Atlanta's civic pride more than anything else... That's probably just for the simple fact that Atlanta has lost its last remaining major bank headquarters to a direct regional economic and civic competitor in Charlotte... Which is a city that has taken all of Atlanta's previous major bank headquarters over about a 35-year period.

Near the end of the Bisnow article that you linked to, Kris Miller, President of Atlanta-based commercial and medical developer Ackerman & Company, acknowledged how sad it is to lose a Fortune 500 headquarters.

But Miller noted that the function of extending credit out to developers and businesses really has little to do with where a bank's headquarters is housed, but is ultimately about the strength of the market where the request for credit is being made.

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/atlanta/news/...medium=Browser

From 1985 to 1996, Atlanta lost three major bank headquarters to Charlotte (four if you count Augusta-based First Georgia Bank) and has (with the exception of the Great Recession steep economic downturn) continued to grow and prosper.

(> Atlanta-based First Atlanta Bank was acquired by then Winston-Salem based Wachovia (which is now the East Coast base of Wells Fargo) in 1985...

> Augusta-based First Georgia Bank was acquired by Charlotte-based First Union Bank (later Wachovia and Wells Fargo) in 1986...

> Atlanta-based C&S/Sovran was notably acquired by Charlotte-based North Carolina National Bank (later NationsBank and Bank of America) as it constructed its new 55-story bank tower in Midtown Atlanta in 1992...

> Atlanta-based Bank South Corporation was acquired by Charlotte-based NationsBank (later Bank of America) in 1995-1996.)

Much like with what happened after previous major bank mergers and acquisitions that saw major Atlanta and Georgia-based banks swallowed up by major Charlotte and North Carolina-based banks in the '80's and '90's when newly-formed North Carolina-based megabanks like Wachovia, First Union, NationsBank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo continued to do very high volumes of business in Atlanta; Atlanta will continue to enjoy a robust level of credit availability and investment from the new Charlotte-based BB&T/SunTrust megabank... That is because Atlanta is a fast-growing population center that will continue to be a major (massive) hub of economic activity for the Southeastern U.S.

The previous high-profile acquisitions of Georgia-based banks by North Carolina-based banks seemingly had the potential to be "bad news for Atlanta's economic future" but they were not.

That is because a major part of the motivation for the acquisitions of Atlanta-based banks by North Carolina-based banks has been to do more business and be even more of a dominant force in the very fast-growing Atlanta market, not withdraw from it.

Atlanta also gained more Chase branches, but I love my Credit Union, and I would to see all local Credit Unions grow and expand.

[jsvh]

The banking capital that Georgia lawmakers created -- in Charlotte | AJC

This is the story of how the General Assembly not only picked the winners, but drove away an entire flock of golden geese. Given that the Legislature is currently considering a take-over of the city of Atlanta-owned Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, it might be something still worth pondering.

Good intentions can quickly go sour...

[citidata18]

Originally Posted by Atlwarrior

Atlanta also gained more Chase branches...

IMO, only gaining more branches of an awful bank (only surpassed in awfulness by Wells Fargo and Bank of America) is nothing to brag about.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by Atlwarrior

Atlanta also gained more Chase branches, but I love my Credit Union, and I would to see all local Credit Unions grow and expand.

Atlanta gained more Chase bank branches when New York-based JP Morgan Chase bought Seattle-based WaMu (Washington Mutual) out of federal (FDIC) receivership during the 2008 Financial Crisis after WaMu collapsed in what was the largest bank failure in American history.

Chase basically bought WaMu for pennies on the dollar at the bargain basement price of just under $1.9 billion.

Chase saw an opportunity to expand into the markets of the West and the South (including metro Atlanta) at a time when much of the rest of the country was in a seemingly apocalyptic financial and economic crisis... And because Chase avoided much of the subprime lending meltdown that consumed multiple other major banks, Chase was in position to take advantage of a prime opportunity to secure hundreds-of-billions of dollars of banking assets for only pennies on the dollar.