Trust Company of Georgia
On September 21, 1891, SunTrust's most direct corporate ancestor, the Trust Company of Georgia, was granted a charter by the Georgia General Assembly as the Commercial Travelers' Savings Bank of Atlanta.[8] The founders were John M. Green, Joel Hurt, H. L. Atwater, W. A. Hansell, T. J. Hightower, J. G. Oglesby, J. D. Turner, John B. Daniel, Joseph Hirsch, Leon Lieberman, Louis Wellhouse, A. J. McBride, D. O. Dougherty, W. A. Gregg, W. W. Draper, A. C. Hook, W. T. Ashford, George W. Brooke, C. I. Branan, and C. D. Montgomery.[9]
In November 1893, it restructured as a trust company and renamed itself Trust Company of Georgia.[9]
Sun Bank
The earliest predecessor of Sun Bank was founded in 1911 as The People's National Bank in Orlando, Florida. In 1920, it became the First National Bank. In the early 1930s, during the Great Depression, the First National Bank and Trust Company failed. It was reorganized on Valentine's Day 1934 as the First National Bank at Orlando.[8] In 1973, the bank merged with other Orlando banks to become SunBanks.[10] As of December 31, 1973, it had three bank-related subsidiaries and total assets of $1.713 billion.[11]
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.[12]
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.[12]
Trust Company of Georgia merger
In 1985, Trust Company of Georgia and SunBanks merged to form SunTrust Banks, Inc. The merged company was headquartered in Atlanta, and continued to operate as Trust Company Bank in Georgia and Sun Bank in Florida.
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 Financial Corporation 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.[13] Crestar's (and SunTrust's) earliest predecessor, Farmers Bank of Alexandria, was founded in 1811.[14]
In 1988, Suntrust was added to the S&P 500 Stock Price Index.[14]
The Robinson-Humphrey Company
The Robinson-Humphrey Company, one of Atlanta's oldest and important companies,[22] was acquired by SunTrust in 2001. However, SunTrust had long coveted Robinson-Humphrey, reportedly having pursued it for more than 80 years.[23] Trust Company of Georgia, the oldest progenitor of SunTrust, was rebuffed in an effort to buy Robinson-Humphrey in 1917.
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.[23] 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.[24]
In 1982, Martin sold Robinson-Humphrey to American Express
Truist Financial Corporation
On February 7, 2019, BB&T Corporation reported that it would acquire SunTrust to create the sixth-largest US bank, with assets of $442 billion and market capitalization around $66 billion. BB&T will be the nominal survivor, but the merged bank will be headquartered in Charlotte under a new name, Truist Financial Corporation. However, Truist will retain significant operations in Atlanta.[6][25][26] It was subsequently announced that Atlanta will be Truist's headquarters for wholesale banking, while Winston-Salem will be the headquarters for community banking. This could mean more jobs in both cities.[27] SunTrust had been the last major bank headquartered in Atlanta, which had been the South's financial capital for much of the 20th century.
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.
