BB&T Corp., Winston-Salem, N.C., said roughly half of its $1.5 billion in warehouse commitments are currently funded.
The bank's warehouse business was bolstered by last year's acquisition of the troubled Colonial BancGroup of Montgomery, Ala., once a top-ranked player in the sector. (BB&T already had a small warehouse business but was not a large national player.)
In an interview with American Banker, Daryl Bible, the bank's chief financial officer, said that during the past year BB&T has "right-sized" Colonial's warehouse business by purging large and risky relationships.
Bible said BB&T's warehouse business is more diversified and more conservative than Colonial's. Colonial's largest warehouse client was Taylor Bean & Whitaker, a Florida-based nonbank that filed for bankruptcy protection last summer.
TBW had tried to buy Colonial (with borrowed money) but the deal collapsed in the summer of 2009 and a criminal investigation of the mortgage banker ensued with charges eventually being filed against its CEO, Lee Farkas.
