APRIL INTERVIEW JOHN C. ASBURY, president and CEO, Union Bankshares Corp., Richmond
A Virginia regional bank
CEO re-creates something ‘lost nearly 20 years ago’
Union Bankshares more than doubled its size to $16.8 billion in assets in less than two and a half years. “Phase one of the grand plan is essentially complete,” Asbury says.
by Robert Powell
ohn Asbury describes himself as an “accidental banker.” While attending Virginia Tech, he found his calling in a summer job at United Virginia
Bank in Radford, his hometown. After graduation, he joined
Wachovia Bank & Trust in Winston-Salem, N.C., beginning a banking career that has led to a variety of high-level banking posi- tions in cities all over the country. “I
22 | APRIL 2019
have lived in every time zone in the continental United States,” he says. Asbury’s employers included
some of the biggest banks in the country, but he never forgot the Virginia-based regional banks that once were a major force in the com- monwealth’s economy. All of them were acquired by larger, out-of-state banks. For example, Richmond- based United Virginia Bank, which later changed its name to Crestar,
was acquired by Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc. in 1998. “I witnessed the six great
Virginia regional banks fall like dominoes during the course of the ’90s,” Asbury says. He didn’t expect to return to
Virginia, but an opportunity arose when Richmond-based Union Bankshares, the parent company of Union Bank & Trust, was looking for a successor to Billy
Photo by Rick DeBerry
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