SunTrust Banks

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. 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.

In November 1893, it restructured as a trust company and renamed itself Trust Company of Georgia.

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. In 1973, the bank merged with other Orlando banks to become SunBanks. As of December 31, 1973, it had three bank-related subsidiaries and total assets of $1.713 billion.

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.

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.

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 in December 1986, 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. Crestar's (and SunTrust's) earliest predecessor, Farmers Bank of Alexandria, was founded in 1811.

The company operated three primary business units: Consumer Banking & Private Wealth Management, Wholesale Banking, and Mortgage.

As of September 2016, SunTrust Bank operates 1,400 bank branches and 2,160 ATMs across including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The bank announced in 2018 that it will close its last five West Virginia branches, all in Kroger stores.

Executives

On April 21, 2011, William H. Rogers Jr., began a transition into the CEO role previously held by Jim Wells, who retired December 31, 2011. Formerly SunTrust's COO, Rogers assumed the title of CEO on June 1, 2011. Rogers had been named President in 2008. At that time, the current Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is Aleem Gillani was named in April 2011.

In 2015 and 2016, two corporate treasurers have gone on to become CFOs at large regional banks, including Kevin Blair at Zions Bancorporation and Paul Burdiss at Synovus, and a unit strategy head, Inder M. Singh, became CFO at IT firm Unisys.

2014 National Mortgage Settlement

In 2014, the Federal government together with state attorneys general in 49 states and the District of Columbia reached a settlement requiring SunTrust Mortgage, Inc., to provide $500 million in various forms of relief to mortgage borrowers. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia entered the Consent Order on September 30, 2014. The consent order addressed SunTrust's alleged misconduct regarding its mortgage servicing and foreclosure practices. SunTrust was also required to create a 40 million dollar fund for the approximately 45,000 SunTrust borrowers who were foreclosed upon between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2013. In addition, SunTrust was required to adhere to significant new homeowner protections. The consent order required that SunTrust follow the servicing standards set up by the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement (NMS) with the five largest banks.

Controversies

In September 2015 SunTrust laid off one hundred IT professionals with a controversial severance agreement clause by SunTrust that required laid-off employees to be available to help without pay for a period of two years. On October 23, Suntrust reversed course and removed the clause: "to make myself reasonably available to SunTrust regarding matters in which I have been involved in the course of my employment with SunTrust and/or about which I have knowledge as a result of my employment with SunTrust."