Union Planters

Union Planters operated over 760 banking centers in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.

Union and Planters Bank was founded by William Farrington, a Memphis businessman who had prospered during the American Civil War and emerged the wealthy head of an insurance company.

He refused to pay off the railroad company's loans and he attended board meetings during which he read lengthy protests into the minutes, demanded detailed information on bank operations and voted in opposition to even the most routine measures.

At a time of extreme financial hardship throughout the American South, Union and Planters nevertheless posted profits thanks to the sound advice the bank received from several Wall Street contacts.

With little formal education, Hill had established himself in the business world as owner of a combination grocery store and saloon in Sacramento, California which he had founded amidst the 1849 gold rush.

Samuel Read began as a clerk in a West Tennessee country store before moving to Memphis in 1857 to work in the cotton supply business.

This expansion was achieved by purchasing Mercantile National, a small and troubled institution renamed the Franklin Savings Bank and soon experienced strong growth.

An orphan since he was 16, he came to the bank as a messenger in 1900 then rose through the ranks, his aggressive nature eventually catching the eye of Frank Hill.

A teller reported to Hill that this was not the first time this had been done, and additional inquiries revealed that Polk had also diverted nearly $20,000 in Liberty Bond accounts for his own use.

A day after his disappearance was reported in the local press, Polk wired Hill from El Paso, Texas that he would be returning soon and that there was no reason for concern.

In the summer of 1928, however, Union and Planters again faced difficult circumstances when its account holders panicked and a bank run occurred.

In order to shore up its finances, the bank sought a merger partner, resulting in an association with Rogers Caldwell, a Nashville investment banker.

Within ten years, riding the bull market of the 1920s, he controlled a network of fifty companies valued at over five hundred million dollars.

Senator Luke Lea, bought a fifty-one percent stake in Manhattan Savings Bank and Trust Company in Memphis and agreed to merge with Union and Planters.

The parties developed a massive reorganization plan, raising new funds to transform Union and Planters into a national bank.

In 1967 Brown was replaced by C. Bennett Harrison, who struggled for the next seven years addressing the bank's problems, only landing Union Planters in deeper trouble when in the 1970s higher interest rates turned many high-risk loans into money-losing propositions.

At the same time, he took steps to revitalize the bank, closing unproductive branches and cutting staff while raising salaries to redress the long-term problem of low pay.

Union Planters, which a decade earlier owned but a single electric typewriter, now became the most technologically advanced bank in the region, allowing it to operate with significantly fewer employees.

Although he returned the bank to profitability and repaired its tarnished image, after ten years of his leadership Union Planters was at best a lackluster performer.

[1] Matthews was asked to resign as CEO in 1984 and his replacement, Benjamin W. Rawlins, Jr. immediately vowed to return Union Planters to traditional banking services.

By this time, Union Planters attracted the attention of Wall Street, as rumors spread over the next few years that it was either fattening itself up for the market or that a larger player in the consolidating world of banking would find it a desirable addition.

In 1998, the $2.3 billion acquisition of Magna Group of St. Louis bolstered Union Planters' position in Missouri and expanded the bank into Iowa and Illinois.

Rawlins was replaced as chief executive by bank president Jackson W. Moore, a lawyer who joined Union Planters in 1989.

The addition was also in keeping with another key strategy of Moore's: shifting the focus away from rural community banks to the core urban markets of Memphis, Nashville, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Miami.