Contact Dick Hughes at dhughes@greenvillejournal.com.
JOURNAL BUSINESS
N.C. Bank Acquires Another By DICK HUGHES | contributor
Capital Bank Financial Corp., the company that gained a foothold in South Carolina with acquisition of Spartanburg’s failed First National Bank of the South, has extended its position in North Carolina with the proposed purchase of a Winston-Salem bank. Capital Bank reached an agreement to buy Southern Community Financial Corp. of Winston-Salem for $2.875 a share. At that price, Capital will pay roughly $46 million for Southern Community’s 16.8 million outstanding shares. Southern Community turned a profit in 2011 of $520,000 after losing $25.7 million in 2010 and $65.7 million in 2009. It reported total assets of $1.5 billion at the end of last year. Capital Bank Financial was originally called North American Financial Holding, a Charlotte start-up formed by former Bank of America executives with a $900-million war chest to acquire failed or “underperforming” community banks in the Southeast. It acquired First National Bank in July 2010 in a transaction financially subsidized by the FDIC. First National’s branches in Spartanburg, Greenville and Columbia have been renamed Capital Bank. Through other FDIC-assisted acquisitions and conventional purchases, Capital Bank has total assets of $6.5 billion and 143 branches in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Virginia and southern Florida, excluding what Southern Community will add upon closing. Contact Dick Hughes at dhughes@greenvillejournal.com.
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ment and Workforce said professional and business services (+3,900), health care (+3,200) and leisure and hospitality (+2,700) “had robust gains in employment” in February. Hiring in manufacturing, which has led the state in job growth with 9,500 additional jobs since February 2011, slowed to just 300 new jobs in February. Employment in the retail trade lost 1,700 jobs in a normal seasonal adjustment. Financial services lost 1,000 jobs. In a report on regional employment, economists for TD Bank noted that employment gains in the South Atlantic are lagging behind New England and the Middle Atlantic on a three-month moving average, but Delaware and South Carolina were “the best performers” in this region. “In South Carolina, nearly all the job gains were in the public, education and healthcare sectors,” the TD report states.
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people driving the decline,” the department said. It was the third largest month-to-month gain in employment since 1976. The national unemployment rate was 8.3 percent. In the Upstate, Greenville’s unemployment rate inched up from 7 percent in January to 7.2 percent in February – still the lowest rate in the state, ahead of Lexington at 7.3 and Charleston at 7.5. Greenville’s job market rose by 3,475 jobs to 225,866, the highest county number in the state. Greenville’s jobless rate statistically inched up because hiring did not keep pace with the rate of people actively resuming job-hunting. In Spartanburg, a similar pattern took place between January and February. That county’s rate rose from 9.4 percent to 9.5 percent as the employed workforce gained, but not enough to absorb an increase in people looking for work. Anderson’s unemployment rate jumped from 9 percent to 9.8 percent. The Department of Employ-
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APRIL 6, 2012 | GREENVILLE JOURNAL 33