Pinnacle chooses new Midtown Atlanta HQ

Published June 26, 2026 3:30 PM

1 Min Read

In this week's banking news roundup:

Pinnacle Financial Partners is moving its headquarters to a new 25-story office tower in Midtown Atlanta.
Provident Bank in Iselin, New Jersey, named Adriano Duarte to succeed Thomas Lyons as chief financial officer.
Binance will shut down services for customers in France, Italy, Spain and Poland after the exchange withdrew its MiCA licence application in Greece; and more.

Pinnacle Financial Partners

Pinnacle selects Atlanta office tower for corporate headquarters

Pinnacle Financial Partners' corporate headquarters will be located in a new 25-story office tower in Midtown Atlanta, the company said in a press release.

The holding company of Pinnacle Bank has agreed to lease 165,000 square feet across five full floors at Ten Twenty Spring, part of the Spring Quarter mixed-use district along the Downtown Connector. Pinnacle plans to move in during the second half of 2027.

The headquarters selection comes six months after Pinnacle Financial acquired Synovus Financial, which was based south of Atlanta in Columbus, Georgia. Prior to the deal, Pinnacle Financial and its subsidiary, Pinnacle Bank, were based in Nashville.

Pinnacle Bank will remain headquartered in Nashville.

The new headquarters building has capacity for 400 employees, Pinnacle said. The company is exploring nearby spaces for a retail location, according to the release.

"We are serious about being Atlanta's bank, and our presence at Ten Twenty Spring … will anchor our expanding presence in the gateways to the South," Pinnacle CEO Kevin Blair said in the release. —Allissa Kline

Tyler de Noche via Wikimedia Commons

New Jersey’s Provident Bank gets new CFO

After 15 years, Provident Bank of Iselin, New Jersey, has a new chief financial officer. Starting July 1, Adriano Duarte will be CFO of the $25 billion-asset lender, replacing Thomas Lyons, who had held the post since 2011 but is now retiring.

"Adriano is a highly respected and trusted leader whose deep financial expertise, strategic perspective and collaborative leadership style have made a significant impact across our organization," Provident CEO Anthony Labozzetta said in a statement.

Duarte joined Provident in 2020, when parent company Provident Financial Services acquired SB One Bancorp of Paramus, New Jersey. Duarte had been CFO of SB One Bank, and after the merger served as Provident's chief accounting officer.

"I am honored to assume this role and grateful for the confidence Tony, the Board of Directors, and my colleagues have placed in me," Duarte said in a statement. "I look forward to continuing to work alongside our talented teams across the organization to support our strategic priorities." —Nathan Place

Gabby Jones/Bloomberg

Binance to pull EU services after MiCA license withdrawal

Binance will shut down services for customers in France, Italy, Spain and Poland starting July 1, after the exchange withdrew its MiCA licence application in Greece.

The company emailed affected users this week, telling them it would stop onboarding new customers immediately and wind down all crypto asset services by month's end. The deadline is regulatory, as MiCA's full licensing regime took effect in December 2024, with July 1, 2026, as the hard enforcement cutoff across the European Economic Area.

Binance had applied to Greece's Hellenic Capital Market Commission but received no formal decision before withdrawing. The exchange said it would pursue authorization in another EU member state, though the company has not named its next target jurisdiction. —Jasmine Ni

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Shareholders approve sale of Green Dot Bank to CommerceOne

Green Dot Corporations' shareholders have voted to approve the previously announced sale of the consumer fintech to two different firms owned by Alabama entrepreneur Bill Smith.

Green Dot announced that around 99% of the votes at a special shareholder's meeting on May 15 were in favor of the transaction, and that the votes represented approximately 72% of the total number of outstanding shares of Green Dot common stock as of the date of the meeting.

Pending regulatory approvals, CommerceOne will acquire Green Dot Bank and form a new bank holding company that owns both CommerceOne Bank and Green Dot Bank. Smith Ventures will acquire Green Dot's nonbank fintech operations to be run as an independent fintech. Additionally, Green Dot Bank will serve as the exclusive issuing bank to said independent fintech business under a separate seven-year deal.

The transactions are expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2026. —Melinda Lucy

Adobe Stock

Stockholders approve merger of New York-Chicago area banks

Esquire Financial Holdings in New York expects to finalize its acquisition of Signature Bancorp in Chicago in the third quarter, the banks announced this week.

The $348 million, all-stock deal has received approval from the stockholders of each bank, according to a joint press release. The pending transaction has already received regulatory approval and waivers, the companies said this month in a separate release.

Esquire, which is headquartered in Jericho, New York, operates a full-service commercial bank that specializes in the litigation industry and small businesses. The $2.3 billion-asset bank has branch offices in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, and an administrative office in Boca Raton, Florida.

The privately held Signature, which is slightly smaller with $2 billion of assets, also does business in the litigation market. It is the banking arm of Signature Bancorporation. Besides law firms, it serves medical practices, manufacturers, technology firms and professional service firms. —Allissa Kline

Adobe Stock

SoFi acquires AI investing platform Composer

SoFi Technologies has acquired Composer, an AI-powered investing platform that lets retail investors build and automate rules-based trading strategies using plain-language prompts.

The platform is positioned as a middle path between passive investing and fully autonomous AI trading. Rather than letting an algorithm make continuous decisions, Composer translates an investor's thesis into predefined rules that execute automatically.

SoFi CEO Anthony Noto framed the deal as consistent with SoFi's broader strategy of folding innovative fintech technology into its consumer ecosystem. Composer will eventually be bundled into SoFi Plus, the company's premium membership tier, according to a press release.

The acquisition follows SoFi's launch last month of SoFi Coach, an AI financial assistant. —Jasmine Ni

Bloomberg

Stanley tower in Dallas gets approval for economic grants

Dallas City Council approved economic incentives for Morgan Stanley as the bank weighs a $1.3 billion skyscraper downtown.

The package would provide Morgan Stanley up to $18.5 million in economic development grants, as well as a 10-year tax abatement of up to 90% on business personal property. The New York-based bank is weighing a 709,000-square-foot tower at 2401 McKinney Avenue, according to city documents.

"Morgan Stanley's engagement with Dallas speaks to the strength of our financial services ecosystem," Mayor Eric Johnson said in a statement. "My administration is intent on growing Dallas's financial services sector in order to power a thriving economy that benefits all Dallas residents."

Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

The new tower would boost Dallas' push to become a financial center outside Wall Street. The project site lies less than a mile from Goldman Sachs' 5,000-employee campus, which is expected to open in 2028. Bank of America will anchor another tower going up nearby. —Joe Lovinger, Bloomberg News

JPMorgan names Simon Dale to lead credit portfolio group

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

JPMorganChase set to open private banking office in Hamburg

JPMorganChase is set to open a new office in Hamburg this year as the U.S. behemoth expands its wealth management services to more locations in Germany.

"Our real estate team is currently making the final preparations," Caroline Pötsch-Hennig, who heads the private banking business in the country, said in an interview. The office will be located at Domplatz in the city center and cater to clients in northern Germany.

The Wall Street bank has long been expanding in Germany, having established its European hub after Brexit in Frankfurt, from where it also serves wealthy clients. It has started a local retail bank, based in Berlin, and opened a private banking location in Munich last year.

"In Germany, wealth is more spread across the country – unlike in France and Italy, for example, where wealth is concentrated in the Paris area and northern Italy," Pötsch-Hennig said. "Therefore, it makes perfect sense to open offices in key regions of Germany." —Stephan Kahl, Bloomberg News

Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg

BofA names Tan head of Southeast Asia investment banking

Bank of America appointed Dominic Tan as head of Southeast Asia investment banking to replace Antonio Puno, who is relocating to London, according to an internal memo.

Tan will retain his current role as head of Asia Pacific consumer & retail investment banking, according to the memo confirmed by a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman. Puno will join the firm's financial sponsors investment banking team for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Tan, currently based in Hong Kong, will relocate to Singapore in the third quarter. He will report to Peter Guenthardt, head of Asia Pacific global corporate & investment banking and to Martin Siah, head of Southeast Asia GCIB and Singapore country executive, the memo said.

The U.S. bank also recently hired Srijith Nair, formerly of Goldman Sachs, to join its Asia financial institutions group in Singapore. He's expected to start in the third quarter and will report to Michael Evans, head of the division, according to the spokeswoman. —Cathy Chan, Bloomberg News