Ed Crutchfield, a deal-hungry banker who catapulted his relatively small North Carolina bank into a regional powerhouse during the 1980s and 1990s, died Tuesday at 82.
Crutchfield struck more than 80 deals as CEO of Charlotte-based First Union Bank, buying banks up and down the East Coast at a time when loosened interstate banking laws fueled a major wave of consolidation. First Union, which later became part of Wells Fargo, swelled from just $7 billion of assets when Crutchfield took over in 1984 to $253 billion when he
Much like today, the vision driving the deals was get-big-or-get-bought. But First Union, along with cross-town rival NationsBank (now Bank of America), also sought to become a diversified bank that could help middle-market businesses in the South get the types of services typically offered only by big New York firms.
In the process, Crutchfield and his chief business rival, former BofA CEO Hugh McColl, turned Charlotte into the banking hub it is today.
"They viewed that they could have Wall Street in the South, and to a certain extent, that was created," said Christopher Marinac, an analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, who recalled Crutchfield laying out his vision at analyst meetings while chain-smoking. "I think they were largely successful."
Crutchfield grew up in Albemarle, near Charlotte, and started working as a bond analyst at the bank in 1965. He'd become First Union's president some eight years later and its CEO in 1984.
At the time, states were starting to ease restrictions on interstate branch footprints. A wave of financial industry deregulation under President Ronald Reagan continued under George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton, and the number of banks in the country would shrink from 14,000 in the early 1980s to 8,000 in 2000.
First Union was small at the time, making it a seeming candidate to be snapped up by a larger competitor. But Crutchfield was a buyer, not a seller, earning the nickname "Fast Eddie" as he scooped up lenders along the Eastern seaboard.
"He had a terrific way about him when he sat down with other CEOs," said Rodgin Cohen, one of the country's top banking lawyers and senior chair at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
Cohen, who worked with Crutchfield on several deals, said he "disarmed people" with his down-to-earth-nature and humor.
"He could be convincing. He was seen as the type of person that you were glad to sell your bank to," Cohen said.
Elliott Crutchfield, Ed's son, said his father was a "builder" who took the lowest-paying job from his post-business school job offers because "he saw the most opportunity" to become a leader at First Union.
"He got a lot more satisfaction of catching Citigroup from nowhere than he would have working his way up through Citigroup," his son said.
The First Union brand went away soon after Crutchfield left the bank. His successor as CEO, G. Kennedy Thompson, announced a merger with rival Wachovia in 2001, and First Union took on Wachovia's brand. Wachovia, too, went away in 2008, two years after buying a mortgage lender that ran into trouble in the housing bust. Wells Fargo absorbed Wachovia at the height of the financial crisis.
The deals Crutchfield struck were not always pretty. Bringing together two regional banks' systems and staffers is no easy task. Even today, Charlotte-based Truist Financial
After First Union's 1998 purchase of CoreStates Financial Corp. of Philadelphia, the integration went so poorly that the bank
Bankers have "learned a lot about how to do these integrations by virtue of some of the mistakes that occurred" in the 1990s consolidation wave, Marinac said. Analysts "cut less slack today" when messy integrations happen "because we know better," he added.
"That's not to knock it at all," Marinac said, explaining that the banking industry learned lessons about the importance of back-end work after the "big and bold" deals of the 1990s.
Purchase prices were another source of controversy for Crutchfield. He faced skepticism from investors who thought First Union overpaid in certain deals, with some analysts arguing that the money the bank spent on M&A could have been used more productively elsewhere.
Crutchfield
"I don't apologize for our acquisitions," Crutchfield said. "It is a poor strategy to do no acquisitions and say, 'We'll just sit around for four or five years and wait for someone to buy us.'"
Crutchfield's biggest critic was banking analyst Thomas Brown, who's now CEO of the investment firm Second Curve Capital. Crutchfield once called Brown a "little red-haired boy" and banned him from coming into First Union's main office, according to
In an email on Friday, Brown called Crutchfield "a good man with a down home spirit and honesty" who believed both in "making First Union a survivor in a consolidating industry" and in making Charlotte a thriving city.
"We strongly disagreed but there aren't many bank CEOs that I enjoyed a drink with more than Ed Crutchfield," Brown wrote.
Crutchfield retired as First Union's CEO in 2000 after getting lymphoma, though he subsequently remained active in civic and business circles. Years later, he'd fight back a more severe bout of cancer.
The avid fisherman reflected on life after banking in a
"If I thought about retirement, it was with dread," Crutchfield said at the time. "What a silly thought. It's been a ball."
