PNC Financial Services Group, which will enter Atlanta as a retail bank as soon as December, expects to build branches in the metro area to fill in the network it intends to acquire from RBC Bank USA and Flagstar Bank.
In a conference call Wednesday with analysts, PNC Chairman and CEO James Rohr also said the bank would hire wealth managers and commercial bankers in the Southeast as it integrates its new network.
PNC announced in June that it would acquire Royal Bank of Canada’s U.S. retail operations for about $3.45 billion. A month later, PNC said it would buy 27 metro Atlanta branches from Michigan-based Flagstar.
The RBC acquisition is expected to close in March, while the Flagstar deal could be completed in December. The moves would make PNC the seventh-largest bank in metro Atlanta.
Pittsburgh-based PNC would have 82 branches in metro Atlanta upon closing of the acquisitions.
Rohr, in his comments to analysts, said RBC considered having 100 branches in metro Atlanta. Rohr said “five or six” of the branches it will acquire in Atlanta might be closed as it integrates the network, but that the bank could add 20 branches to get close to that 100-branch network.
PNC spokesman Fred Solomon said an exact number of new corporate banking and wealth management hires has not been determined.
“Atlanta is important to PNC," Solomon said. "We think it is among the most important markets we expect to acquire in the Southeast.”
PNC said Wednesday that its third-quarter net income fell to $826 million, or $1.55 per share. That’s down from $1.09 billion, or $2.07 per share, a year earlier.
The prior-year period benefited from a $328 million, or 62 cents-per-share gain, related to the sale of PNC Global Investment Servicing.
The results surpassed the earnings of $1.50 per share that analysts polled by FactSet predicted.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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