First Tennessee to buy Raleigh's TrustAtlantic Bank for $80M

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Steve Wilson

TrustAtlantic Bank CEO Jim Beck

Lauren K. Ohnesorge

Staff Writer- Triangle Business Journal

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Raleigh's TrustAtlantic Bank is being sold to First Tennessee-owned First Horizon National Corp. (NYSE:FHN) in a deal worth about $80 million.

The combined bank would be the 11th-largest in Raleigh, with five Raleigh branches, 2 percent of the city's market and $467 million in local deposits.

It's the final chapter in a Raleigh story that started in 2006. That's when TrustAtlantic began, when Jim Beck, a former Capital Bank CEO, teamed with investor Steve Johnson to acquire and recapitalize Millennia Community Bank of Greenville, N.C., and create the new entity.

TrustAtlantic Financial and its subsidiary bank, TrustAtlantic had $453 million in total assets and $395 million in total deposits as of Sept. 30. The bank has four full-service banking offices in the Raleigh-Cary metro area and one in Greenville. All will operate as First Tennessee branches once the acquisition closes.

"This acquisition provides an important expansion in the state's Research Triangle region, one of the most attractive markets in the Southeast," says Bryan Jordan, First Horizon's chairman and CEO.

The Triangle Business Journal has more on the deal and how it evolved.

Lauren Ohnesorge covers information technology and entrepreneurship.