Synovus Financial has hired a former Regions executive to head up the Georgia bank’s foray into corporate and investment banking.
Tom Dierdorff was most recently managing director and group head of financial services for Birmingham, Alabama-based Regions Financial. Before that, he helped build out the investment banking and corporate finance effort at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.
Synovus, which has $55.5 billion of assets, announced in October that it would be expanding into the profitable, but competitive, market for larger commercial clients.
Dierdorff will bring growth opportunities as he builds out Synovus’ corporate and investment banking business, CEO Kevin Blair said in a press release Monday.
On the company’s third-quarter earnings call in October, Blair announced it would be building the new unit in an attempt to chase business “upmarket.”
The business will offer banking and capital markets products to larger and more complex companies, including those that are backed by private equity firms, than Synovus has served in the past.
Synovus plans to target specific industries, rather than casting a broad net for any corporate clients. In October, Blair said the Columbus, Georgia-based company has the ability to originate loans over $100 million and sell pieces of these debt deals off to outside investors.
Synovus said Monday that it will continue adding employees to the new effort.
“We do want to make sure that as we build this out, we're not going to build a generalized model,” Blair said on the October call. “We're going to go after industry specialty in the corporate and investment banking space, and that will be predicated based on what's available in the marketplace from a talent standpoint.”
