BB&T Corporation, the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based financial services company with strong insurance interests, is maintaining its strategy of expansion across the southern U.S. by agreeing in principle to merge with Birmingham, Ala.-based Cooney Rikard & Curtin Inc. (CRC), the nation’s largest independent wholesale insurance broker, and announcing several other acquisitions over the past several weeks.
CRC provides property, casualty, and professional insurance company placements to commercial clients, and is expected to generate $575 million in revenues for 2001. Founded in 1982, the company operates in 45 states, and has regional offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Redondo Beach, Calif., Metairie, La., and Boca Raton, Fla. CRC also plans to open an office in Atlanta in the first quarter of 2002.
The company will keep its present name and will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of BB&T Corporation; CRC’s 260 employees will continue in their present roles. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but it is expected to completed by the end of the year.
Another BB&T subsidiary, Raleigh, N.C.-based BB&T Insurance Services, which is the largest retail broker in the Carolinas and Virginia and 10th largest in the country, unveiled plans to expand in South Carolina through the acquisition of U.S. Insurance Services Inc., a Greenville-based provider of property and casualty insurance for residential homebuilders.
BB&T Insurance Services president Wade Reece noted that acquiring U.S. Insurance Services will enable the company to build on a very important niche in the insurance business of providing property and casualty coverage to building contractors. U.S. Insurance Services will merge with Greenville-based BB&T-Goldsmith Joyner, and will keep its current employees. The acquisition is expected to be completed in November.
BB&T Corporation also continued to expand its banking presence across the South, announcing the planned acquisition of MidAmerica Bancorp of Louisville, Ky. in a $372.4 million transaction. BB&T also acquired The Southeastern Trust Co., a Greenville, S.C.-based trust and asset management firm, expanding the company’s BB&T Trust division’s market position in that state.
Topics Mergers & Acquisitions USA
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