BofA loses ground in Spartanburg

By Dick Hughes  

OCTOBER 30, 2011 10:20 a.m. (0)

Banking competition in Spartanburg is tightening with national and regional rivals gaining ground on Bank of America, the FDIC’s summary of deposits for 2011 suggests.

BOA’s market share dropped from 27 to 20 percent as its deposit base in the county declined $475 million to $825 million from July 2010 to June 30.

SunTrust, BB&T, Wells Fargo/Wachovia and First Citizens all gained ground.

BB&T, which acquired its foothold in Spartanburg County in 2001 with acquisition of First Federal Bank of Spartanburg, made the biggest gain, growing deposits by $110 million to $525 million, jumping ahead of Wells Fargo/Wachovia to third place behind Sun Trust.

Carolina Alliance, a bank started by local investors and opened in 2007 to stay close to home in Spartanburg, gained the most among smaller institutions.  Its deposits rose from $181 million to $203 million and its market share from 3.75 percent to 4.81 percent.

First National Bank of the South, which was renamed Capital Bank National after being taken over by North American Financial Holding in July 2010 in a FDIC bankruptcy sale, lost $154 million in deposits. It fell from 6^th to 9^th in market share.

One of the state’s most aggressive banks in terms of expansion, South Carolina Bank & Trust of Columbia entered the Spartanburg market for the first time in 2010 with an investment office and later a full retail branch.

Spartanburg’s total deposit base declined from $4.8 billion in 2010 to $4.2 billion this year.  It has 20 banks with 77 offices and remains fifth in the state behind Horry, Charleston, Richland and Greenville counties.

Greenville, which has $10.8 billion in deposits, 34 banks and 163 offices, is the state’s richest and most competitive market, and it witnessed the most dramatic shift in position.

Wells Fargo replaced TD Bank, successor to Carolina First, as the largest bank in Greenville by deposits, as TD rid itself of costly out-of-market deposits and Wells aggressively sought new depositors.

By purging $2 billion in brokered deposits, TD fell from first in market share in its home county to fourth behind Wells Fargo, Bank of America and BB&T.

TD had $780 million in deposits, down from $2.3 billion a year ago, and went from market share of 22.3 to 7.2 percent.

It was a change Rob Hoak, TD’s president for South Carolina and Wilmington, N.C., said was 100 percent related to the brokered certificates of deposit that TD paid off in late 2010 and early 2011.

Ridding the brokered funding used by Carolina First, which went into a precipitous decline during the recession from 2008 until sale to TD in May 2010, is a sign of TD strength, Hoak said.

“Because TD is a triple A rated bank, we don’t need to fund ourselves that way with higher yielding brokered CDs,” he said. “We elected to let those brokered CDs runoff as they matured.

At a peak in 2008, he said, Carolina First had $2.7 billion in brokered deposits and today has “very, very few. We’ve run through most of it.”

Wells Fargo picked up an additional $1.9 billion in deposits in Greenville from July 2010 to June 30 of this year.  Wells’ $3.5 billion gave it a 31 percent share of the market from just 15 percent a year ago.

Bank of America had $1.3 billion