United Community Banks is getting out of the business of lending to large medical companies by selling its Nashville-based unit to a larger bank in Gulfport, Miss.
Hancock Holding Co., a banking firm with $21 billion in assets, said Tuesday it is buying UCBI’s $190 million portfolio of corporate healthcare loans plus its loan office in Nashville, home of major healthcare businesses such as HCA Holdings, one of the nation’s largest hospital operators.
The deal represents something of an about-face for Blairsville-based UCBI, the third-largest Georgia-based bank, with $9.4 billion in assets.
A specialty lending arm that focuses on healthcare corporations, small businesses and commercial real estate projects has accounted for much of the bank’s new loan growth over the past year.
But the medical lending unit, which UCBI started from scratch less than three years ago, had increasingly been bringing in larger corporate loan deals than UCBI was comfortable taking on, said Rex Schuette, UCBI’s chief financial officer.
Such loans, up to $600 million, are typically divvied up among a pool of a dozen or more banks.
“We were turning down more and more of the (deals,)” said Schuette. “It was probably a much better fit for a much larger bank.”
He said UCBI is selling the loan portfolio and business “at par,” or at the face value of the assets. “It will not have a material impact” on UCBI’s earnings, said Schuette.
Leaving UCBI with the deal are four of its loan officers who helped build up the healthcare lending business.
Hancock’s healthcare loan portfolio is about four times larger than UCBI’s, and lends heavily in New Orleans and Houston, another major center of the healthcare industry.
“The new (loan office) in Nashville, known as the healthcare capital of the country, will allow us to better offer our financial products and services to an industry that is growing across our footprint,” said Hancock CEO John M. Hairston.
