Fast-growing Raleigh bank sells to Virginia competitor for $476 million
A burgeoning Raleigh community bank is being bought by a larger regional bank looking to expand its presence in the Carolinas.
TowneBank, based in Suffolk, Virginia, will acquire North Carolina’s Dogwood State Bank for around $476 million, the two companies announced Tuesday.
Dogwood has 17 branches across North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, including locations in Fayetteville, Charlotte, and Sanford, along with its headquarters on Six Forks Road in North Raleigh. It was founded in 2000 as Sound Bank before a group of bankers recapitalized the company under its current name in 2019.
Since then, Dogwood has multiplied its assets six-fold: from $350 million to nearly $2.4 billion. Gaps created by big bank restructurings and an influx of small business loans through the federal Paycheck Protection Program helped drive this growth, CEO Steve Jones told The News & Observer during an interview Tuesday.
Jones will stay on at TowneBank to lead the company’s banking operations in the Carolinas.
“It gives us a bigger balance sheet,” he said. “It gives us more products to offer to our clients. They have private banking and a lot of other lines of business that we don’t have.”
TowneBank is a substantially bigger financial institution, with assets totally more than $18 billion. The Virigina bank, which already operates multiple branches in Raleigh and Cary, said in a statement that adding Dogwood was part of its “strategic journey down the fast-growing Interstate 85 corridor from Richmond, Virginia, to Greenville and the upstate region of South Carolina.”
News of the merger shot Dogwood’s stock up 53% on Tuesday. Under the deal, investors will receive 0.7 shares of TowneBank for each Dogwood share they own.
Dogwood entered this summer as one of North Carolina’s 33 state-chartered banks, a total that has dwindled from 56 banks in 2015 and 88 banks in 2005.
The first three months of this year saw 34 more U.S. bank deals, according to analysis by the Raleigh-based accounting firm Cherry Bekaert. This marked a rebound in merger activity following a few relatively quiet years.
Asked why larger institutions may continue to eye North Carolina banks for acquisition, Jones said the answer could be found in the state’s growing population.
“Everybody wants to be in North Carolina,” he said. “Every bank needs to do business here.”
This story was originally published August 19, 2025 at 3:21 PM with the headline "Fast-growing Raleigh bank sells to Virginia competitor for $476 million."
