Huntington Bancshares is buying regional bank Cadence Bank in an all-stock deal valued at $7.4 billion that will strengthen its position across the Southern U.S.

Cadence, which has headquarters in Houston, Texas and Tupelo, Mississippi, has more than 390 locations across Texas and the South. It runs branches across Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.

Huntington runs more than 1,000 branches in 14 states. It is typically referred to as a super regional bank, a group of large national banks that are significant in size, often hundreds of billions in assets and hundreds of branches, but are dwarfed in size by the banking giants Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, who have size and scale that the super regionals cannot replicate.

The super regionals have been growing considerably in recent years in order to better compete with the Wall Street titans in various businesses. For example, Capital One bought Discover Financial, which jointly created the nation's largest credit card company. Huntington Bancshares bought Detroit's TCF back in 2021. And last month PNC Financial announced that it plans to buy Colorado-based FirstBank for $4.1 billion.

Huntington said Monday that once the deal closes it will become the No. 1 bank in Mississippi and a top 10 bank in both Alabama and Arkansas by deposits. The transaction will also give it a foothold in high-growth markets such as Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando and Tampa.

Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington will issue 2.475 shares of common stock for each outstanding share of Cadence common stock.

Huntington does not plan to close any of Cadence's branches. Cadence Bank teams and branches will operate under the Huntington Bank name and brand.

Cadence Bank Chairman and CEO James D. Rollins III will become non-executive vice chairman of the board of Huntington Bancshares Inc. once the deal is complete. He will also serve as a director of Huntington Bancshares and The Huntington National Bank. Cadence will also have two other members join the Huntington Bancshares' board.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026. It still needs approval from Huntington and Cadence shareholders.

Shares of Huntington Bancshares declined about 5% before the market open.