North Carolina-based BB&T will buy SunTrust in an all-stock deal, creating the sixth-largest bank in the U.S., officials announced Thursday morning.
 
The combined bank, under a new name, would have about $442 billion in assets, $301 billion in loans and $324 billion in deposits through the merger, which if approved, is valued at $66 billion, according to the announcement.
 
In the Wilmington market, BB&T is among the largest lenders in terms of local deposits. It had $1.9 million of in-market deposits, according to the FDIC’s latest annual report. (Among banks with a local presence, only Live Oak Bank reported a higher amount, but because it does not have branches its deposit activities elsewhere fall under the in-market figure.)
 
Locally, Charlie Mattox serves as market president for BB&T, which is based in Winston-Salem.

Atlanta-based SunTrust had nearly $291 million of in-market deposits, according to FDIC figures, making it the ninth-largest bank in the area. Sandra Spiers heads up SunTrust’s local base.
 
A new headquarters will be established in Charlotte, officials said, adding that the new institution will equally split its board of directors and executive management team. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

“By bringing together these two mission- and purpose-driven institutions, we will accelerate our capacity to invest in transformational technologies for our clients. Our shared culture embraces the disruption of technology and we will take this innovative mindset to expand our leadership in the next chapter of these historic brands,” William Rogers, SunTrust’s chairman and CEO, said in the announcement.

Under the deal, BB&T shareholders would own about 57 percent of the new company, and SunTrust shareholders would own about 43 percent, according to the announcement.

BB&T Chairman and CEO Kelly King, however, described the deal as “a true merger of equals.”
 
“It’s an extraordinarily attractive financial proposition that provides the scale needed to compete and win in the rapidly evolving world of financial services,” he said in a statement.

The combined bank would serve more than 10 million U.S. households, officials said, “with leading market share in many of the most attractive, high-growth markets in the country.”
 
The deal is the “world’s largest bank merger in more than a decade,”  Bloomberg reports.