home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=91TT1507>
- <title>
- July 08, 1991: Business Notes:Banking
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- July 08, 1991 Who Are We?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 47
- Business Notes
- BANKING
- Survival of The Biggest
- </hdr><body>
- <p> With banks struggling under falling profits and bad loans,
- the industry is succumbing to financial Darwinism. Banks are
- seeking safety in numbers. In what could be the largest merger
- in U.S. banking history, NCNB, based in Charlotte, N.C., offered
- last week to buy Atlanta's C&S/Sovran Financial in a stock swap
- valued at $4 billion. The deal would create a so-called
- super-regional institution with total assets of $116 billion,
- second in size only to Citicorp among U.S. banks.
- </p>
- <p> NCNB, which acquired First RepublicBank of Texas in 1988,
- has long coveted C&S/Sovran. The proposed merger came only
- three days after Winston-Salem's Wachovia Corp. agreed to buy
- troubled South Carolina National for $800 million. The deals
- probably foreshadow a new wave of acquisitions, even among such
- big banks as Chemical, Chase Manhattan, Wells Fargo and Security
- Pacific. Says analyst James McDermott: "The industry is poised
- for a massive round of consolidations."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-