Bank M&A Drops Charlotte From Second To Third-Largest U.S. Banking Hub
With the announcement on Friday that Select Bancorp Inc., the holding company for Select Bank & Trust Co., is buying Charlotte-based Carolina Premier Bank, there will probably be only two banks headquartered in the Queen City by the end of this year: giant Bank of America and the considerably smaller NewDominion Bank, a community bank.
Deals of this kind have caused Charlotte to drop to the third-largest banking center in the nation, after being second (behind New York) since the 1990s.
The decrease to two Charlotte-headquartered banks depends on the $40M Select-Carolina Premier deal being approved by shareholders and regulators, as well as the completion of two other deals in the works, one involving Capital Bank, the other Park Sterling Bank. As recently as 2007, Charlotte was home to eight banks.
Carolina Premier Bank, a North Carolina-chartered community bank, operates four locations, one in Charlotte and three in the South Carolina communities of Rock Hill, Blacksburg and Six Mile.
Select Bank is headquartered in Dunn, North Carolina, and so is no stranger to the Carolinas. The acquisition will allow the bank to expand into markets it wants to be in, namely Charlotte and northern South Carolina.
“The acquisition of Carolina Premier Bank will move Select Bank & Trust to over $1B in assets and our footprint will expand west to Charlotte and into northern South Carolina," Select President and CEO William Hedgepeth II said.
"Our market share in cities and towns such as Dunn, Greenville, Goldsboro and Fayetteville and other locations in North Carolina allow us to continue to expand into markets such as Raleigh, the Wilmington area, and now, Charlotte and northern South Carolina," Hedgepeth said.
"We believe this strategic acquisition will allow us to build out our Raleigh and Wilmington area markets while establishing a presence in western North Carolina and northern South Carolina.”
The Charlotte Observer reported earlier this year that San Francisco took Charlotte's spot as the second-largest banking center in the U.S., in terms of the value of loans and other assets held by banks with HQs in the city.
Charlotte banks hold about $2.26 trillion in assets, or $13B behind San Francisco banks. (New York banks hold about $8.45 trillion in assets.)
