Beck bounces back.

PositionTRIANGLE REGION - TrustAtlantic Bank, First Horizon National,

More than a decade after he left Raleigh-based Capital Bank under a cloud, Jim Beck may be the comeback champ of North Carolina banking. As CEO of TrustAtlantic Financial, he and financial partner Steve Johnson took a struggling bank with one branch and built a franchise that attracted an $80 million buyout in October from First Horizon National, the MempJiis-based owner of First Tennessee Bank, that state's biggest. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2015, with TrustAtlantic's five branches under the First Tennessee banner. Beck helped organize Capital Bank in 1997, raising $27 million, a record for a North Carolina startup. He left in August 2003, a day after the bank restated its quarterly earnings downward 82% because of the accounting for troubled loans. TrustAtlantic opened in 2007 after Beck and Johnson raised $40 million and paid $8.1 million for Greenville-based Millennia Community Bank, a minority-owned bank with $30 million of assets. The timing proved savvy, escaping the bad loans issued before the recession that hammered the industry. TrustAtlantic moved its headquarters to Wake County, where it has four branches. Assets expanded more than tenfold, and First Tennessee is paying 1.61 times TrustAtlantic's tangible book value...

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