Meet the biggest bank you’ve never heard of

Truist wasn’t even a word a year ago. Now it’s one of America’s biggest banks.

The $28 billion marriage of SunTrust and BB<><><><><><><><><><><><>&T means those a href=”https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/13/business/truist-bank-suntrust-bbt/index.html” target=”_blank”brands are getting slowly phased out /aafter a combined 275 years of history./ppThe deal between the nation’s largest banking tie-up since 2004 was presented as a merger of equals, forcing the banks to start with a blank slate./pp”The whole essence of Truist is about two great, iconic, old companies coming together to form a new organization that is looking forward,” Truist CEO Kelly King told CNN Business./ppTruist, which officially started trading as a new company on Monday after a href=”https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/20/business/suntrust-bbt-bank-merger-truist/index.html” target=”_blank”getting regulatory approval/a, hired a national branding company to come up with a name./pp”We gave them a clean sheet of paper and said we want a name that doesn’t carry baggage,” said King, who previously served as CEO of BB<><><><><><><><><><><><>T./ppYet the new corporate-sounding name has been mocked on social media. It has even been compared with Tribune Publishing’s infamous, and short-lived, a href=”https://money.cnn.com/2016/06/02/media/tronc-tribune-publishing-gannett/” target=”_blank”rebrand to Tronc./a An unofficial Twitter poll by a href=”https://www.americanbanker.com/news/hard-sell-ahead-for-bb-t-suntrust-as-truist-lands-with-a-thud” target=”_blank”American Banker/a found that more than two-thirds of users “hate” the Truist name./ppKing predicted the new brand will eventually catch on and reminded critics that Verizon was a made-up word, too./pp”We have no second thoughts at all. We love it,” he said./ppTruist even compromised on the location of its headquarters. The new bank will be based in Charlotte, but it will maintain a strong presence in Atlanta, where SunTrust was headquartered, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where BB<><> <><>T was based./ppTruist promises no mass layoffs/ppBank customers likely haven’t noticed a major difference from the merger just yet. The names on local branches haven’t changed, and aren’t expected to for at least a year. (However, SunTrust and BB<><><><>T customers can now use any of the company’s 4,500 ATMs for free.)/ppTruist has promised Wall Street the deal will create $1.6 billion in cost savings, including by shutting down branches./ppKing said Truist has not decided precisely how many branches will close, although he conceded that in some places BB<><>T and SunTrust branches are located “side by side.”/ppWhen the merger was announced, SunTrust and BB<><><><> <><><><>T pledged not to lay off client-facing employees who are performing well./pp”It’s the compassionate, right thing to do for our teammates,” King said. “It’s not one of those things where your branch is going to close, ‘Y’all are going to get fired.'”/pp’We’re still small’/ppThe Truist deal, the largest since before the 2008 financial crisis, is testing the nation’s appetite for large bank deals. With more than $460 billion in assets and $330 billion in deposits, Truist is now America’s No. 6 commercial lender./ppThe SunTrust-BB