THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 10, 1995 TAG: 9503100337
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
Commerce Bank, the Virginia Beach community bank acquired in January, has stepped up its pursuit of business loans in Hampton Roads.
Armed with additional resources from parent Southern National Corp. in Winston-Salem, N.C., Commerce has expanded its lending limit for a single customer to $40 million from $8 million, said R. Scott Morgan, executive vice president and head of the bank's newly created corporate banking division.
The amount that a bank can lend to a single customer is limited by the amount of capital the institution has.
Commerce will rely on employees of Southern National's Carolina banks for assistance at monitoring larger, more specialized loans, Morgan said. However, ``we will maintain a significant amount of authority'' when making its commercial loans, he said.
Once the largest locally owned commercial bank in Hampton Roads, Commerce was acquired in January by Wilson, N.C.-based BB&T Financial Corp. in a transaction valued at slightly more than $100 million. At the end of February, BB&T merged with Southern National, one of BB&T's long-time rivals in North Carolina.
This combination, with $20 billion of assets, became the sixth-largest banking company in the Southeast and the 36th largest in the country. The holding company retained the Southern National name, while the bank subsidiaries in North and South Carolina took the name Branch Bank & Trust Co.
With the additional lending capacity from Southern National, Commerce will be able to hold onto commercial customers that previously departed when Commerce could not meet their borrowing needs, Morgan said.
As a percentage of Commerce's total loans, commercial loans probably will increase modestly from their current 35 percent share, he predicted.
Commerce said two of its senior vice presidents, William C. Branche and Herbert R. Hamlet, have joined Morgan in the corporate banking division. by CNB