Within the past month, two community banks with a presence in Wilmington have announced merger plans. 

In June, Southern Pines-based First Bancorp announced it had signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Greensboro-based Carolina Bank Holdings Inc., parent company of Carolina Bank. The current value of the transaction is about $97.3 million.

First Bancorp is the parent of First Bank, which has nine locations in the Wilmington market. 

The combined company will have about $4.1 billion in assets, $3 billion in loans and $3.4 billion in deposits, according to a news release.

The merger agreement has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of each company and, subject to approval by regulators and Carolina Bank Holdings shareholders, could close as soon as the fourth quarter of 2016 and undergo systems conversion during the first quarter of 2017, said Hunter Young, First Bancorp’s senior vice president of marketing.

“In order to be a successful community bank nowadays, you need scale,” Young said. “We’re going into [markets] such as the Triad, the Triangle and Charlotte.”

Acquisition of Carolina Bank, with its banking locations in Greensboro, High Point, Burlington and Winston-Salem is a step in that
direction, Young noted. 

Also in recent weeks, South State Corp., parent company of South State Bank, announced plans to merge with Southeastern Bank Financial Corp. of Augusta, Georgia. 

Columbia, South Carolina-based South State announced June 17 it had signed a definitive merger agreement with Southeastern, according to a news release. Southeastern is the holding company for Georgia Bank and Trust Co. and also operates as Southern Bank & Trust in Aiken County in South Carolina. 

South State Bank operates six offices in the Wilmington market. 

The merger agreement has been unanimously approved by the board of directors of each company. With approval from each bank’s directors, the institutions wait for regulatory and shareholder approvals. Once those are obtained, the closing and system conversion is scheduled to occur in the first quarter of 2017, according to the release. Southeastern will be merged into South State. 

The transaction is valued at about $335 million.

The combined company will have about $10.5 billion in total assets, $8.7 billion in total deposits, $7.2 billion in total loans and a network of 133 branches in the Carolinas and Georgia, the release stated. 

Meanwhile, Old North State Trust LLC has acquired the NewBridge Bank Trust Department, according to a news release. 

The department and its staff were not included in NewBridge’s merger with Yadkin Bank, which was completed March 1.

Five former NewBridge department personnel – senior trust officer Tammy Sharpe, investment strategist Brian Wildman and trust administrators Tanya Lewis, Jamie Davis and Lessie Clark – are now part of the consolidated team at Old North State Trust, the release stated.  

They will work with clients at the firm’s five offices in North Carolina – in Wilmington, Greensboro, Lexington, Greenville and Siler City.