Simmons First National hires TCF veterans for equipment finance unit

Simmons First National in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, has hired an 11-member team to develop its new equipment finance operation, which will focus largely on business aviation, over-the-road trucking, franchise finance and marine financing.

The team will also support customers in the $23.4 billion-asset bank’s broader middle market and large corporate finance business, Simmons First announced Tuesday.

Much of the team joins Simmons after working at TCF Financial in Detroit; the $50 billion-asset TCF was sold to Huntington Bancshares in June for $6 billion. The Simmons team will be led by Lee Palm and Brian Shapiro, both formerly of TCF, and Phil Mulder, who joins from the $185 million-asset Citizens Financial Group in Providence, Rhode Island.

Palm will lead the group as president. Shapiro will serve as managing director, heading the transportation and marine elements of the business, while Mulder will be the division’s head of credit and risk.

“Being able to add an entire team with the expertise and skill set that encompasses all of the business verticals necessary to begin operations represents a unique plug and play opportunity that will allow us to immediately hit the ground running,” Matt Reddin, executive vice president and chief banking officer at Simmons, said in a statement.

The addition of the new team follows a pair of acquisition agreements Simmons announced in June. It said it would buy Triumph Bancshares in Memphis, Tennessee, for $131.6 million and Landmark Community Bank in Collierville, Tennessee, for $146.3 million. Both deals involve a mix of cash and stock and will help Simmons gain scale in the Memphis and Nashville markets. Simmons expects to close both transactions in the fourth quarter.

More deals could soon follow in Tennessee or neighboring states, Simmons Chairman and CEO George Makris Jr. said in a recent interview. Simmons has more than 200 branches in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

“This is not going to take us out of the M&A game for any period of time,” Makris said. “We can digest these and move on to the next one.”