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Familiar Face Leads Bank of the Ozarks In Carolinas

2 min read

What began in 2001 as a one-woman loan production office in Charlotte, North Carolina, has blossomed into a leading franchise for Little Rock’s Bank of the Ozarks.

The pending $64.7 million stock-swap acquisition of Carolinas Corp. should make North Carolina home to the third-largest branch network for Bank of the Ozarks.

The Carolinas Corp.’s $363 million-asset Bank of the Carolinas operates eight offices between Charlotte and Winston-Salem. The purchase is expected to close in the third quarter.

At year-end, Bank of the Ozarks had 17 offices in North Carolina. That ranked fourth among the states represented in the company’s 159 offices, behind Arkansas, 81; Georgia, 28; and Texas, 21.

North Carolina was home to $599 million in Bank of the Ozarks deposits as of Dec. 31.

That total accounted for 10.9 percent of the bank’s overall deposits, which also ranked No. 4.

Helping build the North Carolina franchise were the acquisitions of Woodlands Bank in 2010 and First National Bank of Shelby in 2013 and de novo branches.

That 2001 loan production office in Charlotte was converted to a full-service branch in 2013.

And guess who is president of BOZ’s Carolinas division?

Cindy Wolfe, the one-woman loan production staff that marked the bank’s entry into North Carolina nearly 14 years ago.

“We have an unusual opportunity created by the fact that one of our senior commercial lenders has decided to return to her hometown of Charlotte,” George Gleason, chairman and CEO of Bank of the Ozarks, said at the time.

“While an out-of-state LPO is a departure from our previous plans for 2001, we feel this is a unique opportunity that will benefit the company.”

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