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COPYRIGHT 2000 The Miami Herald
Byline: Ina Paiva Cordle
Apr. 24--Alabama -- the Heart of Dixie, birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, land of college football -- and home to Florida banking.
Lured by Florida's growth, five of the top 23 banks in the state now hail from Alabama, including two of Florida's six largest. Together, the five -- SouthTrust, AmSouth, Colonial, Regions and Compass -- have more than 550 branches holding more than 10 percent of the state's deposits.
In fact, after North Carolina's NationsBank and First Union, which dominate Florida deposits with a combined 39 percent market share and more than 1,300 offices, no other out-of-state group commands as large a branch presence in Florida.
Just a little more than a decade ago, three Alabama banks barely made a footprint when they crossed over the state line, buying tiny banks in the Florida Panhandle or Central Florida.
Today, Alabama banks are one of the fastest growing forces in Florida.
Combined, the five major banks held $20.1 billion in Florida deposits at year-end, up nearly 150 percent from about $8.1 billion five years earlier, figures from the Florida Bankers Association show. Florida deposits grew only 13.9 percent during the same period.
"The Alabama banks years ago realized that their home state didn't offer the kind of growth to sustain independence, first of all, and second of all, there were -- and frankly still are -- too many banks," said David Trone, banking analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. "So those two forces drove them into contiguous states for growth, and Florida was certainly a prime target as one of the fastest growing states."
Alabama banks have proven to be buyers, and after years of bulking up, four of the banks -- SouthTrust, AmSouth, Regions and Compass -- now rank among the top 40 in the nation.
The four, all based in Birmingham, have also made the city of 252,000 the second largest banking center in the Southeast, after Charlotte.
"They're all good banks, conservatively run, very profitable," said Benjamin Bishop, president of Allen C. Ewing & Co. in Jacksonville. "They were competing against each other for years and years, and they became very efficient."
While their stock prices have been clobbered, all banks have largely taken a break from their buying binge during the past year. After rising 600 percent from 1992 to...
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