National Bank of Commerce of Birmingham
- This article is about the former MetroBank which operated as National Bank of Commerce of Birmingham from 1985 to 2005. For other uses, see National Bank of Commerce (disambiguation).
The National Bank of Commerce of Birmingham is a former bank. It was founded in 1965 as the Bessemer Bank & Trust Company with $750,000 in capital. Members of the McWane family were some of the bank's first major depositors, and later became its largest shareholders.
The original incorporators included Malcolm Bethea, Norman Brown, Roger Patterson, W. G. Pettey Jr, and Sam Virciglio. The bank was renamed First Western Bank in 1969 as it expanded into Birmingham. By 1972 it operated an office in the Caldwell-Milner building at 2015 1st Avenue North.
In 1977 the bank changed its name back to MetroBank, and expanded into the adjacent space and remodeled the entire ground floor of the Caldwell-Milner building.
In 1981 the bank acquired the smaller Bank of the Southeast. In 1985 the bank began using the name National Bank of Commerce of Birmingham. At the time, MetroBank had five offices and $47,971,000 in total deposits and Bank of the Southeast had four offices and $28,614,000.
MetroBank was not a member of the Federal Reserve system and was chartered to operate only in Alabama. All of First Bancgroup-Alabama's other subsidiaries were nationally-chartered members.
In 1994 the bank acquired the First American Bank of Pelham.
First Bancgroup-Alabama went public as the Alabama National BanCorporation (ANB) in 1995. At that time, Phillip McWane was the largest single shareholder, with 1.24 million shares.
ANB acquired a number of other regional banks, including the St Clair Federal Savings Bank, before merging them into a newly-founded First American Bank in 2005.
ANB was acquired by RBC Centura in 2007. All former ANB branches took on the RBC Bank name in 2008. Meanwhile, the Charles Investment Group made up of former ANB executives, acquired a majority of the Red Mountain Bank and reorganized it under the National Bank of Commerce name. That business was acquired by CenterState Bank of Davenport, Florida in 2018.
References
- Bowsher, Alice; Philip A. Morris & Marjorie L. White (1990) Cinderella Stories: Transformations Of Historic Birmingham Buildings Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society ISBN 0943994179