SunTrust and its parent SunTrust Bank, Inc. are one of the largest southern United States Banks with assets over 2 billion dollars. The Bank’s headquarters are located in Georgia, where they have been since the 1890’s, as its parent company began here. You can find easily locations all over the southern states ” Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia are all home to branches. I hope to give you a further insight to this bank and its services that help business and people with their banking needs.
The Farmer’s Bank of Alexandria, Virginia was founded in 1811, and this was the earliest “parent” to the SunTrust Bank. The Farmer’s Bank is the corporate version of the Trust Company of Georgia founded in 1891. For its first two years the Bank was originally called Commercial Traveler’s Savings Banks. It then was renamed the Trust Company of Georgia. The SunTrust Bank of our modern times came about because of a corporate banking merger. The Trust Company of Georgia and SunBanks, from Florida became one and is operated as SunTrust Banks. Many branches of this bank did not switch over to the name SunTrust until 1995.
After the union in 1985, SunTrust Banks, Incorporated started to purchase other banks and banking concerns. In 1986, SunTrust acquired Third National Corporation of Tennessee. In 1998, SunTrust acquired Crestar Financial of Virgina and in 2001 SunTrust attempted to takeover Wachovia, but they were unsuccessful. Instead, Wachovia merged with another institution, First Union. In 2004, SunTrust bought the National Commerce Financial Corporation, which was based out of Memphis. They made this purchase for about $7 billion. Once this addition was made, it gave SunTrust branches in both North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Georgia. SunTrust has more recently acquired GB&T Bancshares for just under $154 million. GB&T will now mainly be merged into the SunTrust Atlanta, Georgia banking region. SunTrust has been working diligently to strengthen its assets since its birth in 1985. As of now, there are whisperings going around that SunTrust may be taken over by a larger bank in the near future. There is no date that is set in stone when it will be known whether or not SunTrust will be taken over. And with the economy the bank holding companies have become very conservative in their acquisitions.
Coca-Cola, Suntrust, and its antecedents have had a long relationship. This goes as far back as right after World War I, when the Trust Company of Georgia was the initial public backer of the public offering for the stock of Coca-Cola Company. The Coca-Cola recipe is stored in a SunTrust safety deposit box in Atlanta. SunTrust still has made a investment in fifty million shares of Coca-Cola - a safe bet if history shows us anything. This is worth about $2.5 billion dollars to the company at recent Coca-Cola stock prices. Two of the top Coca-Cola executives also sit on the Board of Directors for SunTrust.
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