McGuireWoods represented Park Sterling Corp. — the largest community bank headquartered in the Charlotte area — in a stock-for-stock merger with South State Corp. The merger is valued at approximately $691 million, based on the number shares of Park Sterling common stock outstanding on March 31, 2017 and on South State’s April 26, 2017 closing stock price.
Announced April 27, the transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2017 pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. Once complete, the combined company will have assets of approximately $14.5 billion and an expanded presence across the Southeast with 183 branches in the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia. South State Corp., the holding company for South State Bank, is the largest South Carolina-based bank holding company.
The deal marks the fifth that McGuireWoods’ community banking team has handled for Park Sterling — the holding company for Park Sterling Bank — most recently advising on its 2016 acquisition of Virginia-based First Capital Bancorp.
Lawyers from McGuireWoods’ M&A, securities and capital markets, antitrust, tax and financial services groups advised Park Sterling in the merger with South State. Led by Chris Scheurer, the McGuireWoods deal team also included David Wolpa, Taylor French, Paul Navarro, Curtis Griner and Porter Durham.
McGuireWoods’ transactional practices placed highly in Bloomberg’s and Thomson Reuters’ respected league tables in 2016, ranking among the top 10 law firms for M&A, capital markets and syndicated debt financings. The firm also represented clients in two major corporate deals that won 2016 M&A Advisor Awards, which recognize top mergers and acquisitions from the past year and the firms involved in closing the transactions.