The Banc Corp. in Birmingham, Ala., said that it is changing its name to Superior Bancorp and the name of its subsidiary The Bank to Superior Bank.
The bank's name change will take place in January, and the holding company's name change will take place no later than May, after its annual meeting.
Both changes were announced Tuesday.
The name Superior is very familiar to the bank's top executives, most of whom once worked at the $1.8 billion-asset Superior Financial Corp. in Little Rock. The Banc Corp.'s chief executive officer, Stan Bailey, and a group of investors acquired Superior in 1998 and sold it to the $7.5 billion-asset Arvest Bank Group Inc. of Fayetteville, Ark., in 2003.
Mr. Bailey and three of his former colleagues took over The Banc Corp.'s management 10 months ago after buying a 4.9% stake in the company.
The decision to change its name was made after The Banc Corp., with $1.4 billion of assets, received approval from the Office of Thrift Supervision to convert from a state-chartered commercial bank to a federal savings bank.
Mr. Bailey had said that the company was changing its charter because he and the other executives are more familiar with the thrift charter.
