Huntington Bancshares buying Cadence Bank in $7.4 billion all-stock deal
[October 28, 2025] By
MICHELLE CHAPMAN
Huntington Bancshares is buying regional bank Cadence Bank in an
all-stock deal valued at $7.4 billion that will strengthen its position
across the Southern U.S.
Cadence, which has headquarters in Houston, Texas and Tupelo,
Mississippi, has more than 390 locations across Texas and the South. It
runs branches across Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.
Huntington runs more than 1,000 branches in 14 states. It is typically
referred to as a super regional bank, a group of large national banks
that are significant in size, often hundreds of billions in assets and
hundreds of branches, but are dwarfed in size by the banking giants
Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, who have size and scale
that the super regionals cannot replicate.
The super regionals have been growing considerably in recent years in
order to better compete with the Wall Street titans in various
businesses. For example, Capital One bought Discover Financial, which
jointly created the nation’s largest credit card company. Huntington
Bancshares bought Detroit’s TCF back in 2021. And last month PNC
Financial announced that it plans to buy Colorado-based FirstBank for
$4.1 billion.
Huntington said Monday that once the deal closes it will become the No.
1 bank in Mississippi and a top 10 bank in both Alabama and Arkansas by
deposits. The transaction will also give it a foothold in high-growth
markets such as Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Atlanta, Nashville,
Orlando and Tampa.
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 Bank transactions are on the upswing
of late. Merger and acquisition activity among U.S. banks jumped to
a four-year high in the third quarter, according to S&P Global
Market Intelligence data through Sept. 30. There were 52 U.S. bank
deals announced in 2025's third quarter. That's the highest
quarterly number of deals since the third quarter of 2021, when the
industry disclosed 59 transactions.
Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington will issue 2.475 shares of common
stock for each outstanding share of Cadence common stock.
Huntington does not plan to close any of Cadence's branches. Cadence
Bank teams and branches will operate under the Huntington Bank name
and brand.
Cadence Bank Chairman and CEO James D. Rollins III will become
non-executive vice chairman of the board of Huntington Bancshares
Inc. once the deal is complete. He will also serve as a director of
Huntington Bancshares and The Huntington National Bank. Cadence will
also have two other members join the Huntington Bancshares' board.
The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026.
It still needs approval from Huntington and Cadence shareholders.
Shares of Huntington Bancshares fell 3.2% in midday trading, while
Cadence Bank's stock rose nearly 4%.
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