Synovus courting bigger businesses

Synovus Financial, the second-biggest banking company based in Georgia, says it wants to do more business with bigger companies, and a large piece of its plan is to partner with other lenders.

The new focus, announced Wednesday, follows of a spate of recent changes — including planned layoffs and some branch closings — at Columbus-based Synovus, which is trying to rebound from two years of heavy losses from the collapse of the real estate market. Synovus is the parent of Bank of North Georgia and 29 other community banks.

Part of Synovus’ strategy centers on a type of partnership with rival banks — known as loan syndications -- to collectively serve larger companies in Synovus’ five-state footprint.

Lenders are clamoring to win the business of bigger clients to diversify and replace profits lost in the fallout of the real estate bust.

Syndications are loans issued and held collectively by a pool of banks. The practice can expand the reach of participating banks and help reduce individual risk.

But it isn’t without potential complications. Synovus was the lead bank for the half-billion-dollar-plus expansion last decade of Sea Island, a relationship that soured when the storied coastal Georgia hotel company defaulted. Its assets were sold in bankruptcy last year to out-of-state investors.

Synovus said it plans to focus the new syndication business on corporate operations and inventory loans, not real estate development. It called such corporate lending a “high potential” market.

“These are significant steps towards ramping up our already strong commercial banking efforts and even better position us to leverage our unique relationship-banking delivery model to serve this market segment,” Chief Commercial Officer Curtis Perry said in a statement.

Chris Marinac, bank analyst with FIG Partners, said investors might be skeptical. Being in charge of syndications is less risky, but sitting in a secondary position can be fraught with problems if a loan goes bad.

Marinac said it remains difficult for many banks to find new revenue sources.

“[It’s] not just a Synovus problem, every bank faces this,” he said.

Synovus also said Wednesday it assigned six executives to the new large corporate banking team, and named former Wells Fargo veteran Chris S. Abele as its head of syndicated loans.