Columbia-based bank moving headquarters to Florida after merger
Columbia is losing another corporate leadership seat as South State Bank merges with another bank and will move its headquarters to Florida, the company announced this week.
South State will combine with Florida-based CenterState Bank to become the eighth-largest bank headquartered in the Southeast, according to a news release from the companies.
The newly combined company will be called South State Bank and boast some $34 billion in assets and $26 billion in deposits. Though its headquarters will be in Winter Haven, Fla., the company will keep a “significant presence” in Columbia, Charleston, Charlotte and Atlanta, according to the news release.
The companies have called this arrangement a “merger of equals.”
South State is at least the third large company to move its leadership from South Carolina’s capital in recent years. Columbia also lost the headquarters of its major health system in the 2017 Prisma Health merger and its major electric utility when SCANA was bought by Virginia-based Dominion Energy.
Current South State CEO Robert Hill Jr. will be executive chairman of the new company. CenterState CEO John Corbett will be the new company’s CEO. A 16-member board of directors will include equal representation from South State and CenterState.
Current South State shareholders will have about 47% ownership in the newly combined company, while CenterState shareholders will own about 53%.
The merger announcement did not note whether jobs from either legacy company will be affected.
The new company will operate in six contiguous states, from Florida to Virginia.
The merger is expected to close in the third quarter of 2020.
The move for South State is the bank’s second merger-like transaction in the past three years. In 2017, South State acquired Charlotte-based Park Sterling Bank in a stock swap valued at $690.8 million.
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 10:15 AM.
