Huntington’s $7.4B deal for Cadence continues Texas push

• What’s at stake: Huntington Bancshares is moving fast to achieve scale in Texas.
• Expert quote: “Our new Huntington footprint will expose us to a little more than half the U.S. population,” said Brant Standridge, Huntington’s president for consumer and regional banking. “It also happens to be the half that’s growing faster, in fact it’s projected to grow 30% faster.” 
• Forward look: The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026.

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Just a week after completing its acquisition of Dallas-based Veritex Holdings, Huntington Bancshares is moving to further expand its Texas presence. The Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington announced Monday that it has agreed to pay $7.4 billion in stock for the $53.3 billion-asset Cadence Bank.

Cadence operates out of dual headquarters in Houston and Tupelo, Mississippi. The company’s footprint is sprawling, covering the Deep South, along with parts of Florida and other Southeast markets. Acquiring Cadence would move Huntington into a number of attractive, fast-growing markets, including Orlando, Nashville and Atlanta.

Still, it’s Cadence’s Texas operations, with 110 branches and $16 billion of deposits, that Huntington appears to prize the most. On a conference call with analysts, Brant Standridge, Huntington’s president for consumer and regional banking, called the Lone Star State’s economy a “juggernaut,” noting that the combination with Cadence adds meaningful scale in the so-called Texoplex region, bounded by Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.

Monday’s deal would vault Huntington, currently Texas’ 14th-largest bank, into the number-eight position, with 144 branches, $31 billion of loans and $26 billion of deposits.

“Our new Huntington footprint will expose us to a little more than half the U.S. population,” Standridge told American Banker following the conference call. “It also happens to be the half that’s growing faster, in fact it’s projected to grow 30% faster.”

“It gives us immediate scale in two of the most significant markets, frankly, in the world, Dallas and Houston,” Standridge added. “We’ll have top-five share in those two markets.”

Chairman and CEO Steve Steinour called the acquisition “transformational.”

“To have a five-share in Dallas and Houston and eight across the state, we are exactly where the dynamic growth in Texas is occurring,” Steinour told American Banker. “We think we’ve got a really powerful economic engine in Texas and these other states that will propel [Huntington] in the decades ahead, not just in 2026 and 2027.”

Huntington expects to close the transaction in the first quarter of 2026. Steinour said the approval process should be streamlined by the fact that Cadence has no bank holding company.

“We only need [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] approval,” Steinour said. “We’ll have the application filed next Monday.”

Monday’s announcement was preceded by about four months of extensive due diligence, Steinour said. A key turning point came July 1, when Cadence Chairman and CEO Dan Rollins spent the day meeting with Huntington’s senior leadership team.

“Dan got a good initial feel,” Steinour said. “There’s a lot of trust and camaraderie [within] the executive team. All that came through, and the operating model came clearer to him.”

The $7.4 billion price tag works out to 1.7 times Cadence’s tangible book value per share. Huntington is targeting $365 million in cost savings, which it expects to realize in 2026 and 2027. Huntington is also projecting 10% earnings-per-share accretion in 2027, the first full year of operations for the combined company. It updated its near-term target for near-term return on tangible common equity from the pre-deal 16% to 17%, to 18% to 19%.

“We have strong line of sight on the actions needed to ensure a smooth conversion and how we’ll drive significant success beyond that,” Steinour said on the conference call.