Empty suits aren’t welcome at Atlanta’s new bank HQ, CEO says
From the penthouse floor of a new Midtown skyscraper, Kevin Blair oversees a city he views as fertile ground for his fast-growing bank.
Many in the Atlanta area don’t know Pinnacle Financial Partners or recognize its logo. The company acquired Synovus Financial, and the banks have yet to merge their branding. Only about 6% of the region’s deposits are controlled by the combined bank, ranking fourth behind larger national competition such as Truist, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
That’s something Blair as Pinnacle’s president and CEO seeks to change, staking his claim in Atlanta by establishing a flashy headquarters in hopes of carving out a larger foothold in the Capital of the Southeast.
But conquest requires more than a good vantage point. It necessitates well-trained soldiers, and Blair says he knows exactly who he wants joining Pinnacle’s ranks.
“We will only hire you if you have 10 years worth of experience and you’ve worked with someone at the firm today who can validate that you’re a culture fit and a high performer,” Blair told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution during an exclusive interview.
“People may reach out to us, but unless you’re validated and you’re somebody we want, we don’t hire you,” he said of Pinnacle’s hiring strategy for revenue-producing positions.
Pinnacle emerged in January as the result of an $8.6 billion merger between Columbus-based Synovus and Nashville-based Pinnacle, keeping the name of the latter.
Pinnacle has laid out a plan to hire 250 new revenue-producing bankers across its footprint this year. The new bank is now the 15th largest in the country, spanning nine states and planning to expand even farther.
The home base for that expansion is Atlanta’s Ten Twenty Spring tower in Midtown, where the company signed a 165,000-square-foot lease for the future headquarters of its bank’s holding company. The company will keep its banking headquarters in Nashville and a large office presence in Columbus.
The Pinnacle brand will replace the Synovus name on branches by the middle of next year.
Pinnacle is metro Atlanta’s largest office lease so far this year, a splashy announcement intended to make its presence — and ambitions — clear.
“What they’ve done is a vote of confidence in the Atlanta area and the state of Georgia overall,” said Tripp Cofield, president and CEO of the Georgia Bankers Association. “I think they’re seeing what a lot of other businesses and banks are seeing — there’s a lot of opportunity in Georgia.”
The bank’s expansion plans come amid an uneven economy. Consumer sentiment is near record-lows, while inflation and international conflicts present further disruptions. The bank’s competitors have their own growth strategies that Pinnacle has overcome.
Pinnacle also has to successfully navigate the change inherent to a merger, combining systems, staving off attrition and moving customers over to new systems. Christopher Marinac, a banking industry analyst and director of research at Brean Capital, said the merger presents a unique opportunity for Pinnacle.
Synovus and Pinnacle were the first banks to announce and undergo a major merger during President Donald Trump’s second term, which is widely viewed as ushering in a friendly regulatory environment for such combinations, and more are likely.
Pinnacle could be poised as a beneficiary, especially as its Atlanta office investment and hiring practices lay the groundwork.
“Part of this office lease is to position themselves for the next five to 10 years,” Marinac said. “The other banks around them have yet to change (through mergers and acquisitions), and I suspect they will.”
“That will create chaos, which therefore creates more opportunities for Pinnacle,” he said.
Seeing a void
There’s a well-worn adage that “people follow bankers, not banks.”
It’s a mantra fully embraced by Pinnacle and something both of its predecessors developed as they grew over the decades.
Synovus was born out of Columbus’ textiles mills more than a century ago, becoming one of the most important companies to Georgia’s second-largest city. Pinnacle is much younger by comparison, being founded in Nashville in 2000, but it similarly focused on community banking and quickly grew.
The Pinnacle resulting from the merger now holds a 22% deposit market share in Nashville and 58% in Columbus, which the company’s leaders say shows their strategic success. With only a 6% market share, Atlanta was identified as the next clear mountain to climb.
“There’s a void in this market,” said Charlie Clark, state head of Georgia banking for Pinnacle. “ … Our company has to have the confidence that we can compete with anybody. We’ve got the capabilities, we’ve got the talent, so now it’s about going to execute.”
Poaching well-respected bankers from rivals is one way to ramp up operations. Not only does it add talent and hamper a competitor, but bankers typically bring their clients along with them.
That doesn’t mean every hire is a good one, Blair warned. Retention, fitting into the company culture and spurring more business after joining the team are all vital attributes to achieving long-term growth, he said.
“We’ve seen other banks come out and brag about hiring people. But they’re hiring headhunters,” he said. “They’re generally hiring anybody that they can get to fog a mirror and they call that success.”
Clark argues that Pinnacle’s current roster of bankers doesn’t include any empty suits. Since the merger, fewer than 6% of the Synovus-Pinnacle revenue-producing workforce voluntarily left, which was below the bank’s projections.
In Georgia, Clark said his team didn’t lose a single banker.
“That shows that they’re bought into the vision, they love where we’re headed and they believe in this new model that we’re implementing,” he said.
By the end of June, Pinnacle reported that it added 124 new revenue producers, which primarily consist of various banking roles such as lending officers. Another 34 were added in July. Cofield said the bank’s hiring pace is impressive, especially given the size and quality of Georgia’s other banking institutions.
“It’s a competitive environment right now, particularly when you talk about producers,” he said. “For good producers, it’s a competitive markets. Always has been and always will be.”
‘Centers of influence’
Atlanta was long a banking hub, but over the decades lost the headquarters of SunTrust, C&S/Sovran and First Atlanta to mergers that ultimately produced Truist, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, respectively.
Bank of America and Truist still have their names on two of the city’s tallest office towers.
Pinnacle’s office selection in Midtown will effectively act as a billboard that its flag is planted in the city.
Developed by Atlanta-based Portman Holdings, Ten Twenty Spring was one of the last office buildings to move forward in Atlanta after the COVID-19 pandemic upended the market. The 25-story tower with a prominent view overlooking the Downtown Connector will soon brandish Pinnacle’s logo.
Marinac said Atlanta traffic will actually play in Pinnacle’s favor.
“It feels like there’s never a good time to drive (on the Downtown Connector),” he said. “There’s a lot of chances for eyeballs on the signage that Pinnacle is going to have. Seven days a week, it doesn’t change.”
Blair said the bank aims to establish its offices within “centers of influence.”
Its Nashville headquarters is within a prominent business park called Nashville Yards, two blocks off Broadway. The bank’s Columbus office is in a new complex along the Chattahoochee River and is expanding by 31,000 square feet. Through Synovus, the bank also has an office at 3400 Overton Park near the Battery at Truist Park, which Pinnacle plans to keep.
“We’re asking them to spend a lot of hours at work,” Blair said. “So we want to have a destination or location that they’re going to enjoy coming to.”
At Ten Twenty Spring, Pinnacle becomes an anchor tenant, joining accounting firm EY and law firm Reed Smith. It brings the building’s occupancy to about 60% and was likely a factor in the office tower recently obtaining a $278 million refinanced loan, a rarity among office properties post-pandemic.
It’ll take roughly a year to build out the new Midtown headquarters, and teams are projected to start relocating to the new space in the latter half of next year. About 400 employees will be based out of the office by the end of 2027.
Blair said hiring will continue to be central to his bank’s plan. He said market leaders can often become complacent once they reach the top, but Pinnacle is gearing up to nip at their heels and start climbing.
“They get a representative share and their sole goal in life is to harvest them,” Blair said. “Just maintain what they have.”
“That’s just not fun,” he said. “We want to grow every day.”