SouthTrust had $5.3 billion in assets by the end of 1986 and had expanded as much as it could in its home state of Alabama.

By the end of 1989, SouthTrust opened its first South Carolina branch, located in Charleston.

By 1991 SouthTrust had entered the North Carolina market when it bought Barclays' small American operation based in Charlotte.

This purchase helped added to an increase in SouthTrust branch number which had grown to over 400.

In Birmingham, AmSouth Bancorporation, Compass Bancshares, Regions Financial Corporation and SouthTrust all became known as the Big Four.

From the end of 2001 to 2003, SouthTrust continued making acquisitions by buying small banks in markets in which they already operated so that it could grow its customer base.

[4] On Monday June 21, 2004 Wachovia Corporation announced it would buy SouthTrust in an all-stock transaction valued at $14.3 billion.

About a year before the merger was announced, Wallace Malone, the company's CEO, quietly moved SouthTrust's commercial banking division headquarters from Birmingham to Atlanta.

When the public found out, Malone quickly assured the city and employees that SouthTrust's corporate headquarters would remain in Birmingham.

[7] This caused residents of Birmingham to be blindsided when the news that SouthTrust had reached a deal to sell itself to Wachovia was announced.

The biggest loss to Birmingham came from SouthTrust moving its commercial banking division to Atlanta a year before the merger was announced, and that Atlanta, not Birmingham, would end up with Wachovia's Southern Banking Group headquarters.

[10] Malone has stated that somewhere around 40% of that total will go into a trust for the families affected by the SouthTrust-Wachovia merger, although nothing further has been mentioned yet regarding this matter.