Similarities and differences?
24 replies (most recent on top)
BB&T treated every customer like they had $10M or more in the bank. BB&T operated like almost like a law firm or consulting firm, hiring top college grads from Wake Forest, paying them well, empowering them, then expecting them to perform. Up or out. Suntrust focused on older, less educated and lower potential staff, who were stable and then micromanaged and spent a lot on training.
I know some people commenting here think the cultural differences do not matter, and for the future of Truist that could be argued to be true. However, from a historical and learning standpoint (think MBA case study) I think there is a lot to learn about Truist's poor performance based on the radically different cultures of BB&T and SunTrust. Cultural differences matter. I was with BB&T for a long time through a lot of acquisitions. I remember John Allison talking about the cultural fit of acquisitions. This is M&A 101 stuff that Kelly King seemed to overlook in pushing for this deal. I'm long gone having only survived the Truist sh*t show for 9 months, but I find this slow moving train wreck fascinating.
I’m an outsider who join not longer before the conversion. BB&T was very well respected and the brand meant alot. Sadly, I have watched SunTrust take over a company (there was no merger of equals) and proceed to make it so slothy and cumbersome while the EL pat themselves on the back and get large pay increases for mediocrity. Joe Thompson is depised, yet he continues to have a job. The Wealth side of this company is a dumpster fire and we all know it. Multiple large teams have already left and I predict more have it in the works.
I hope Kelly King sleeps well at night for selling out all his employees to line his pockets. Just goes to show up a slick PR campaign can do to cover up what a person truly is. BB&T paid SunTrust to take them over with the promise that ST would be in charge in EVERYTHING.
There is still an "us vs them" mindset in some times. My old team, all of the layoffs were in Richmond, while they continued to hire in Greenville.
All one needs to know about the direction of Truist is their Sr. Leadership as part of an effort to save $750 Million dollars decided to essentially DOUBLE the number of highly paid Sr. Exec positions from 11 to 21. If 11 overpaid entitled fools can't figure out how to run the organization why should anyone believe 21 overpaid fools can do the job? This is the same Sr leadership that's firing competent long time IT employees saying they can replace them for 30 cents on the dollar by sending their jobs to India. This is the definition of incompetence.
Biggest issue is the BB&T bought SunTrust, yet hSTI leadership has taken over and turned the bank into STI 2.0 aka SunTruist. This has left a lot of resentment from HBBT folks.
The whole merger of equals was a crock of S. There are always winners and losers, pretending otherwise is a falsehood. hSTI won out and we are all losers as a result.
Running off Daryl Bible and appointmenting a yes man as CFO is a prime example of why SunTruist is in this mess. DB knew we needed to cut expense and improve our efficiency ratio, but instead they kept spending money. Take a look at M&T bank stock for proof.
The bank cultures were completely different. Kelly totally sc--wed the hBBT folks. John Allison was right. He said he always wanted to merge with Suntrust but the cultures didn’t align…Kelly knew that but wanted that big payout
I got the Purpose package but didn't get any stickers. If I didn't get such an integral piece of the program how can I get behind it? F Truist.
Purpose Corner - Special Edition
Three minutes and eleven seconds of my life I’ll never get back. It’s like watching a bad community theater play with an amateur actor completely out of character. Cringe worthy at best.
Remember, we are Truist and we are unstoppable ….(with the constant babble, spin, and complete disregard of reality)
Doesn’t matter what culture was better.
Neither could provide “Purpose Corner - Special Edition”. Only Truist can.
BB&T's legacy tech and culture vs SunTrust's modernized drive and high-performance culture. I can speak for InfoSec where BB&T won out... it was a disaster. Everyone running around with hammers, drills, and sc--wdrivers but no one knowing how to execute. Four years later and InfoSec still isn't integrated. All the best people bailed ship and we're stuck with incompetency. So glad I got out when I did but it's sad seeing the bank that I loved get dismantled from the inside out and some amazing team members forced to make tough decisions. I'm sure that story is reversed department by department. Maybe the moral of the story is that sometimes mergers just aren't the right decision. Unfortunately, the people who needed their payoffs got them and retired. I guess it's a win for them.
The BB&T culture resembles a religious cult, like the followers of the Righteous Gemstones
For the poster thinking a sale would “save” Truist: I guess you’ve never been through it. If you had you will see how much will be saved. Look at ML. They were assimilated into the BoA borg.
Why do you think Truist is primarily during BB&T folks? Suntrust had a horrible wealth management division and they are destroying Scott and Stringfelliw.
Who cares whether BB&T or SunTrust was better. Truist is the company you work for now and failing on every measure possible with no solutions to fix the issue.
We can only hope a bigger bank buys the company and saves everyone from this nightmare culture.
Look at the books at your desk. If you see a copy of "Mindset" next to a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" don't be shocked if you're looking for a new job within the next 6 months.
At least Truist gave us the Purposeful Connection Candy Land game with pins and stickers…what more could be needed to build a unified and sustained culture?
This question is irrelevant at this point. The biggest failure to come from this merger is that leadership, from the top down, failed to create a culture of equals. Instead they fostered an "us vs them" mentality that left many of us that actually wanted to see the merger succeed feel like salmon swimming upstream.
What is amazing is how anyone can think the people who created todays culture or lack there of can be the ones to change it. Can you say delusional!
The long poster is right. The others are happy being miserable . Enjoy your miserable day with your negative thoughts
That was a wall of text that wasn't worth reading.
HR or EL trolling
We worked at all three: BB&T before the merger, then SunTrust before the merger, and then Truist after the merger. Both firms were positive and enjoyable places to grow our careers, but they were of course different. BB&T was one of the best banks in the country at retail, community, and small- to medium- business banking. It was a governance of local authority where the RP ruled and you hoped you were in his (yes, HIS) good graces. It was indeed a culture of patriarchy, followership, and who-you-know, but in a familiar, seemingly humble delivery of anecdotes and down-home stories akin to Alger Hiss meets Norman Rockwell. Behaviors were counted, beliefs were drilled, and results were formulaic in how they informed your compensation. SunTrust on the other hand was stronger at corporate, commercial, and investment banking. Much more hierarchical and functionally organized, it was a culture of polite dissent, discretion, and performance, but with much less patience than BB&T held. SunTrust, too, was a culture of patriarchy and followership but it was delivered and carried in a firm, direct manner. If BB&T was an insurance company with a bank attached to it, SunTrust was an investment bank with a commercial bank bolted on. In either firm, you knew if you were “in” or “out”, and if you accepted your station, either way, you could do well. Each bank knew what it was, and it was easy to know whether you “fit” or not. Truist, by contrast, was a culture of “build the plane while we fly it”. It had a venture capital/start-up feel at first, moving HQ, bold statements of mission and values, assurances of jobs (although no one ever said for how long) a purple color they thought was cool but really wasn’t all that unique, and lots of attention to the superficial. It was like a brand new technology handed to a bunch of people who knew nothing about it, and they did the best they could to make a map out of globe. If banks do 6 things, BB&T did 3 very well and SunTrust did the other 3 very well, but they are two very different sets of things, and blending them required a unification and vision that teammates could rally around. It should have been easy, but the leadership didn’t create a new culture…it just let the prior ones compete. Seeds of hope and the cool kids from investment banking wasn’t gonna get it. You cannot rally around ambiguity, uncertainty, and shades of gray. At least give us something to oppose or support, but a culture of “I don’t know, but trust us”, when 50% of the people doing the heavy lifting are skeptical of not only their leaders but their mirrors from the other company, is doomed from jump.
My team and I left Truist over two years ago because we could no longer see a vision with us in it. They were painting in colors we simply couldn’t see, and when my honest question to my new boss of where are we going and how are we getting there was answered by questioning my faith and home life, I no longer saw myself as a meaningful character in the drama. We’re glad we left, and I know hundreds of people are also happily out of there. But my informed guess is that they left not because of a bad culture or toxic leadership or “that EVP” (hey, I didn’t like him either but he didn’t impact my life THAT much) or “terrible systems”. We left, ironically, out of an absence of purpose….a reason to be….not just as an employee but as a banker, as an advisor, as a resource, or mentor. BB&T and SunTrust did not get where they were by being bad banks; in fact they were quite good at what they chose to master. But you can’t put wings on a boat and expect it to fly OR sail. It has to be one, the other, or neither and become something new. THAT is their failure: they haven’t created something new to contrast to the old, and so people are clinging to the old because they have nothing else. I’ll submit that Bill and company are doing the best they can with what they have and what they thought they could make of it. I just think they were unprepared to apply their heritage culture mindset to a new company where over half the base came from 180 degrees away.
I’ve been following this board for a couple of months and this is my first post. I’ve watched with chagrin as hBBT “plums” take down hSTI “oranges”, and vice versa. My worthless advice is that if you’re still working there, put down the quivers and stop slinging arrows. Yes anonymity can be a warm blanket on a dark cold night fueling bitterness and anger, but your common enemy is not within; it is the despair that arises when good people do nothing. Good luck friends….Find your center, and…be, the ball.
What’s your point asking this question?
What does it matter? The culture at Truist su-ks and it’s getting worse by the day.