Huntington Bancshares - The Huntington National Bank

Huntington Bancshares, Inc. is an American bank holding company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. As of September 2012, the company had $56.4 billion in assets, making it the 37th largest bank holding company in the country. The company is a component of the S&P 500. It was ranked number 610 on the 2008 Fortune 1000.

The company's banking affiliate, The Huntington National Bank, provides retail and commercial financial services in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Huntington also provides retail services online.

There also are selected financial service activities in other states, including offices in Florida, Cayman Islands, and Hong Kong. Huntington also had retail banking offices in Florida until 2002, when it sold these branches off to SunTrust Banks in order to focus on its core Midwestern operations.

Huntington formerly owned ATM's installed at locations of Pittsburgh-based restaurant chain Eat'n Park, which it had acquired through its 2007 acquisition of Sky Financial Group. These are now operated by third-party ATM providers.

In early 2012, Huntington was in merger discussions with Flint, Michigan-based Citizens Republic Bancorp, one of the few major banks that had not repaid TARP funds. Such a deal would have boosted Huntington's presence in Michigan as well as Greater Cleveland, while at the same time entering Wisconsin. In September 2012, Citizens was purchased by rival First Merit

Acquisitions

Company Profile: Huntington Bancshares (NASDAQ:HBAN) - Huntington Bancshares is the holding company for The Huntington National Bank, which operates more than 600 branches in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky ...

On December 20, 2006, Huntington Bancshares announced it would buy Sky Financial Group Inc. based in Bowling Green, Ohio. This merger was completed on July 1, 2007, although Sky branches did not change their branding until late September.

Huntington was one of the banks attempting, alongside Fifth Third Bank, to acquire the National City branches in the Pittsburgh region that the United States Department of Justice ordered sold when PNC Financial Services acquired National City. Huntington, which had entered the Pittsburgh market by way of the Sky acquisition, has been expanding in that market, and had considered the National City branches as a way to expand its market share. Ultimately, PNC sold the overlapping branches to First Niagara Bank.

On October 3, 2009, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation named Huntington as receiver of a $400 million deposit portfolio from the bank failure of Warren Bank in Warren, Michigan. On December 18, 2009, Huntington signed a 45-day lease with the FDIC to run a bridge bank for the failed Citizens State Bank in New Baltimore, Michigan.

Huntington acquired the tiny Savings Bank of Chillicothe, Ohio in the early 1980s, which gained some fame in 2011 when 100-year-old June Gregg revealed to Huntington officials that her father had opened a savings account for her as a baby with Savings Bank in 1913 and that she had subsequently kept the account open to the present day. Huntington officials, after doing research on the account in question, later confirmed it and gave her account a temporary increase in her interest rate to 5% as a centenarian present for her 98-year loyalty to Huntington and the Chillicothe branch's predecessor, Savings Bank.

In April 2014, Huntington announced it would acquire 11 offices of Bank of America throughout Central Michigan, including the Port Huron and Saginaw markets. This will raise the number of Huntington branches in Michigan to 173, which includes over 40 locations within Meijer supermarket locations. Huntington is continuing to grow its footprint in the Great Lakes state. The following month, Huntington bought 13 additional offices from Bank of America in Michigan, mostly in the Flint market. The locations were converted to Huntington branches in September.

Huntington Preferred Capital

Huntington Bancshares also operates Huntington Preferred Capital, Inc. This entity serves as a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT).

Huntington Preferred Capital was organized under Ohio law in 1992 and designated as a REIT in 1998. Four related parties own HPCI's common stock: Huntington Capital Financing LLC; Huntington Preferred Capital II, Inc.; Huntington Preferred Capital Holdings, Inc.; and Huntington Bancshares Incorporated. All these entities are tied via ownership and/or interlocking directorships to Huntington Bancshares, either directly or through Huntington National Bank.

In addition to the common stock, Huntington Preferred Capital also issued 2 million shares of preferred stock, paying a quarterly cash dividend of $0.4925 per share. This stock is largely held by the same companies as the common stock, but a small fraction of the available shares are sold on the open market.

Huntington Preferred Capital had one subsidiary, HPCLI, Inc., a taxable REIT subsidiary formed in March 2001 for the purpose of holding certain assets (primarily leasehold improvements). On December 31, 2007, Huntington Preferred Capital paid common stock dividends consisting of cash and the stock of HPCLI to its common stock shareholders. After the stock dividend was paid out, HPCLI became a wholly owned subsidiary of Huntington Preferred Capital Holdings, which holds all the shares of HPCLI.

Sponsorship

Huntington owns the naming rights to the Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio, Huntington Park in Columbus, Ohio, as well as a 10-year sponsorship with Michigan State University that began in 2012 and includes Huntington financing upgrades to Spartan Stadium in exchange for acknowledgement on scoreboards, programs and videos in football, hockey and basketball venues.

Check collection

In 2012, Huntington started displaying old checks that were written by famous historical people, including 24 former U.S. Presidents such as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Niles, Ohio native William McKinley. Other famous historical people featured were checks signed by Charles Dickens, Thomas Edison, Ernest Hemingway, and Susan B. Anthony, among others. The most notable check was one written by Lincoln to "self" for $800 dated April 13, 1865, the day before his assassination. The checks are estimated to be worth over $75,000 today. Huntington acquired the checks in 1983 when it purchased Union Commerce Bank and received several boxes of old documents, but weren't discovered until 2011 when a Huntington employee was looking through the documents.

References

External links

• Huntington National Bank