Breaking records does not brake the banks.

• Position: North Carolina's banking industry - Industry Overview

Tar Heel bankers were working more than banker's hours to hash out deals in 1997. By acquisitions, the three biggest banks together boosted assets a whopping $130 billion.

In June, Charlotte-based NationsBank Corp. bought San Francisco investment bank Montgomery Securities Inc. for $1.2 billion. That turned out to be a warmup for August, when it made a $15.5 billion bid for Barnett Banks Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla. then the industry's biggest buyout ever. The deal will push NationsBank from No. 5 to No. 3 nationwide in assets.

"Biggest buyout ever" turned out to be "biggest buyout for a bit more than two months." In November, First Union Corp. put up $17.1 billion for Philadelphia-based CoreStates Financial Corp. Only with today's superbanks could the biggest deal ever not even shift First Union one spot up the biggest-bank list. It'll stay No. 6.

For four weeks this summer, Winston-Salem-based Wachovia Corp., with back-to-back deals totaling $2.8 billion for Jefferson Bankshares Inc. of Charlottesville, Va., and Central Fidelity Banks Inc. of Richmond, Va., was set to become tops in Virginia market share. First Union played the spoiler there, too. Already big in the Old Dominion, the bank bought Richmond-based Signet Banking Corp. for $3.5 billion, then Wheat First Butcher Singer Inc., a Richmond brokerage, for $471 million.

Meanwhile, Winston-Salem-based BB&T Corp. was polishing up its $i.5 billion purchase of Whiteville-based United Carolina Bancshares Corp. That gives it 486 branches in the Carolinas and Virginia and a solid lead in home-state deposits, with 18%. By the September weekend when BB&T closed 67 branches, half of UCB's employees were gone.

But despite mergers, bank employment keeps growing. Part of the answer lies in Charlotte, where First Union expects to employ 10,000 by 1999 at its customer-service center. The bank started a 29-story tower next to its 42-story headquarters just as NationsBank completed a 30-story neighbor for its 60-story skyscraper.

The rest of the explanation lies in cities such as Burlington, where Mid-Carolina Bank opened in August. It doubled its assets to $22 million by September and has applied to the N.C. Banking Commission for a second branch in Graham. Nine Tar Heel banks were approved in 1997, the busiest year ever for start-ups. Two more expect to get their charters in early 1998.

Not all of them are traditional streetcorner banks. Two ex-Wachovia executives opened Hickory-based High Street...