BancorpSouth to add Medical District branch
A Tupelo bank has invited a FedEx exec to join its board and branched into the Medical District, one of the few commercial enterprises to open in the ex- panse of medical and classroom buildings near Downtown Memphis.
BancorpSouth Bank plans a grand opening in early March for the new branch in a renovated former law office located at Pauline and Court amid $1.6 billion worth of planned and just completed building projects at nearby hospitals and schools.
“We’re excited to be down there and be part of what is going on in the Medical District,” said Brian Walhood, the Memphisbased president of BancorpSouth’s Northeast region, noting the new office employs four including a mortgage lender and a commercial lender.
BancorpSouth is the secondlargest bank based in Mississippi and the No. 5 bank doing business in metropolitan Memphis, with customer deposits of $910
million. The new office, the bank’s 23rd metro Memphis branch, is its first near Downtown.
The bank has also nominated a Memphian to serve on its board of directors. FedEx Corp. executive Shannon A. Brown would be the only Memphis-area resident seated on the board, a group which sets broad policy and has the legal standing to oversee the chief executive officer. Shareholders are scheduled to vote April 27 on the nomination.
Brown, whose career began more than 30 years ago as a package handler in FedEx’s Memphis global hub, is a senior vice presi- dent at FedEx Express and the chief human resources and diversity officer. He is also a member of the University of Tennessee System Board of Trustees and was ranked by Black Enterprise magazine among the nation’s 100 most powerful executives.
Bringing aboard Brown and branching into the Medical District is the latest initiative under former Texas banker James Rollins. He joined the Tupelo bank in 2012 as chief executive and added chairman of the board duties in 2014. He had been president of Prosperity Bancshares of Houston.
Walhood said there are no current plans to open more branches i n t he Memphis market.
Opening a boutique bank in the Medical District, he said, “gave us an opportunity to go Downtown. There’s a lot of pedestrian traffic down there and we just saw it as an opportunity to get our niche. In years to come that area’s going to have a different look.”
The Medical District en c o mpa ss e s 1 7, 0 0 0 workers, five major hospitals and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, which is completing a $350 million expansion and renovation. Other projects planned in the district include Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital’s $55 million expansion, a $275 million expansion for Methodist University Hospital and a $1 billion expansion at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.