By Evan Sparks
John Asbury did not need a new job.
He was about a year into a role as president and CEO of First National Bank of Santa Fe, a community bank based in New Mexico. It was his first CEO role after a long career of executive roles with large and regional banks, bouncing from city to city — Atlanta, Charlotte, Seattle, Birmingham — as a sort of “Mr. Fix-It” within large and regional banks.
“I finally had done everything I wished to do in the large bank environment and had the opportunity to run a traditional community bank in the Southwest,” he recalls.
But in 2016, he got a call from his home state of Virginia. Union Bank and Trust, based in the Richmond area, was looking for a new CEO. The community bank was at roughly $8 billion in assets, and the looming $10 billion-asset threshold gave its leaders a tough choice: grow or sell — or, in the absence of a decision, stagnate.
“We were not going to be able to reach the customer base and be prosperous to our shareholders,” says Ron Tillet, then a board member and now chairman of the bank board.
Asbury asked Wendy, his wife of 37 years and a fellow native Virginian, if she would consider going home. “There is one opportunity that could make sense, and that opportunity is here now — and I will probably get this call only once,” he recalls telling Wendy.
He began to sketch out in his head a plan for the future of the bank. Virginia’s once-dense ranks of midsize and regional banks had been merged away in the 1990s. “All of those banks had been consolidated into larger organizations,” explains Rob Gorman, CFO at the bank. “There wasn’t a Virginia-headquartered bank that could meet the needs of small and middle-market companies in Virginia.”
Asbury says that the opportunity was wide open. “There was a space to bring back something that had been lost 20 years ago — the great Virginia regional bank.” He brought his idea — his plan to grow the bank into a regional presence — to the board.
They were sold. Asbury joined the bank in fall 2016 and succeeded Billy Beale as CEO in January 2017. “I was quite candid with them,” Asbury reflects. “It was clear that changes were going to need to be made. This was an $8 billion-asset bank with roots that go back to 1902 — a wonderful traditional community bank, but that model was not the model that was going to achieve their desired objective.”
The model for 3x growth
Asbury could see the company would need to be transformed, particularly to take advantage of opportunities in business lending. Eight years later, the bank is substantially different than it was when Asbury arrived. Eight billion dollars in assets has more than tripled to $25 billion — half of it from organic growth and half from acquisitions of three $3 billion-asset Virginia banks.
The recipe has been a business transformation, innovation and M&A, Asbury says. “They all work together. M&A typically will step up our financial performance and allow us to continue to invest in transformation and innovation, which makes us more capable of organic performance. And then we repeat the cycle.”
That transformation enables the bank to offer what Asbury calls “the intersection of authentic human experience — what most community banks have been known for — plus digitally enabled technology.” With this combination, “we’re built to be a challenger to the larger banks that dominate depository market share here,” he adds. “We provide an alternative to the large banks while we’re still flexible enough and responsive enough to compete against the smaller banks as well.”
Here’s an example: The Richmond-based Virginia Museum of History and Culture had a goal of completing a major renovation in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the museum to close temporarily, the museum decided to capitalize on the empty building to accelerate the renovation — and the museum turned to Atlantic Union Bank to finance the tax-exempt bonds that made the project possible. “They were large enough to pull off what we needed, but locally minded enough to understand and believe in the project,” says museum president and CEO Jamie Bosket.
“Before John came to the bank, it was primarily a traditional community bank focused on real estate lending,” explains Gorman. “John came in with a lot of experience on the C&I side of the house, and he brought a transformation strategy — primarily to diversify the loan portfolio on both the commercial and consumer sides.”
Today, the bank employs more than 2,000 teammates and has roughly 130 branches across the Old Dominion and stretching into Maryland and North Carolina. The bank also has a relatively new name: Atlantic Union Bank, which in Asbury’s words, “simply tells where we are (the Mid-Atlantic), who we are (Union) and what we are (a bank).”
“The thing that I am more proud of than anything else is we have done exactly what we said we would do,” he says. “And to be very clear, it’s not just me. It’s really the group of people, the group of leaders and the wonderful people at this company that make it happen.”
“He makes promises to the board and he keeps those promises,” says Tillet. “His first promise was that we needed to grow as an organization. We now compete with the largest banks that are in our footprint.”
Arbitrary thresholds
Why did an $8 billion-asset bank need to make a jump to $25 billion in just a few years? The answer has to do with “artificial thresholds” created by regulation, Asbury says — the $10 billion mark in particular, at which point banks come under direct CFPB supervision and experience the direct price caps of the Durbin Amendment that can cost a bank up to half its debit interchange income.
“The complexity of Atlantic Union Bank was no different when it was an $8 billion bank versus when it was a $12 billion bank, yet we were thrust into an entirely different regulatory regime,” says Asbury. “So if you make the decision to go over, which is what the board told me they desired, then what you’re really deciding is that you will be a $13 billon or $15 billion dollar bank. You will not be a $10.0000001 billion bank because your expenses are going to run up, your financial performance is going to drop, and you’ll simply be taken out.”
Addressing these thresholds — $10 billion, increasingly $100 billion and others — has been a top priority of Asbury as Virginia Bankers Association chair, Midsize Bank Coalition of America chair, ABA American Bankers Council chair and now as chair of the ABA board. “These somewhat dramatic arbitrary and artificial thresholds are not good for the industry,” he says. “I think that the industry should be evaluated and addressed more based on the complexity of these institutions, not an arbitrary asset limit.”
Building the right team
When Asbury joined the bank, many of then-Union’s executive leaders were nearing retirement. “I told the board, ‘This is going to be a move-fast strategy, and I’m going to need to get leaders in here who’ve been there, done that,’” he recalls. “So I really pressed to make change quickly and began to create the momentum.” He brought on leaders like Maria Tedesco, a veteran regional banking executive, as President and then COO, who in turn became what Asbury calls a “talent magnet” for Atlantic Union Bank.
Despite the bank’s growth, it tries to hold on to a scrappier, entrepreneurial edge. “There is no department preparing PowerPoints here,” Asbury jokes. “We all actually have to do real work, including me. You always worry about bureaucracy and you worry about things slowing down and losing responsiveness. I think we’ll fight that for the remainder of my career.”
To help maintain that scrappiness, Asbury emphasizes promoting rising stars within the bank and hiring top bankers from other institutions who value what may be a less bureaucratic work environment. He also leans on his personal rolodex of bankers. “He’s the Kevin Bacon of the banking industry — six degrees of separation from every banker that ever lived,” jokes Rob Gorman.
“He surrounds himself with people who are very, very smart,” adds Tillet.
Asbury focuses on transparency and clear communication to drive the corporate culture. “There are no surprises with John,” says Maria Tedesco, a veteran regional bank executive whom Asbury hired as president and COO. “We know where he’s taking us.”
Asbury and Tedesco communicate with the bank’s teammates through regular “Ask Us Anything” interactive webcasts and video messages. “He believes in communicating — and living — our values,” says Clare Miller, the bank’s chief human resources officer. “I am often on copy when I see teammates email John directly. He responds to each and every inquiry that comes in — it’s no holds barred and he responds to them, often at 11 o’clock at night.”
“We refer to him as the Energizer Bunny,” adds Tedesco. “He is the hardest-working banker I have ever seen”
‘Caring, courageous, committed’
The words “caring, courageous, committed” are never far from Asbury’s lips. They’re the three core values of Atlantic Union Bank. And while he notes that “caring” goes back to the bank’s 1902 origins, he says that “commitment and courage are what have really been developed by the new leadership team here and by the people of this company.”
Asbury urged the creation of employee resource groups to support employees with shared backgrounds. “We see him as an ally in that,” says Jennifer Huffman, SVP for workplace solutions at the bank and program chair of the bank’s Women’s Inclusion Network.
“My advancement came under his leadership,” says Huffman, who was in 2023 recognized by ABA with an Emerging Leader Award. “As we have grown, it has created more opportunities for teammates to step into higher leadership roles.”
According to his colleagues, Asbury has led Atlantic Union Bank in making a robust commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (in the bank’s words). Tedesco says the bank’s ERGs, DEIB council, diversity internship program and other investments are all part of a core message: “We are a place for all people — not just some people.”
Even amid political controversies over DEI issues, Asbury continues to focus on the bank’s DEIB goals. “If you think about your customer base, or if you think about the talent within the organization, you want both to be as broad and deep a pool as possible,” he remarks. “If you narrowly define that pool in the traditional sense — people that look like you and me — then you’re going to have suboptimal results. I simply say ‘This is about being a company for all people, not just certain people. Hope that doesn’t offend you.’”
“John takes a stand,” Huffman adds. “He’s not afraid to take risks.”
Banks of every size
“John understands the importance of diversity — diversity of thought, of customer bases, of asset sizes, of all walks of life,” adds Doug Pick, president and CEO of Feed More, Richmond’s food bank, and a former bank executive. This appreciation for the industry’s own diversity is ingrained in his own career, say his colleagues.
He brings the large bank perspective that not everything scales up naturally. “There does come a point in time where things break down if you don’t have a defined process,” Asbury comments.
Product-wise, Asbury sees a lot to be learned from larger banks on digitally enabled technologies. “We don’t have to offer all things to all people, but for the services and the products that we choose to serve consumers, small and midsize business you do need to offer what they expect and what they need.”
On the flip side, he sees community banks’ “responsiveness and agility”—expressed through the Paycheck Protection Program. “The smaller banks in this country really outperformed, and I think it’s because they were small enough and nimble enough to mobilize in very short order. When the PPP happened, Atlantic Union Bank in the end made 15,000 loans for about $2.5 billion”—just six loans behind the state leader in Virginia, which had three times AUB’s depository market share.
To help banks of all sizes, Asbury emphasizes ABA’s role in advocating and educating policymakers—and, “if they need to, challenging certain regulations in the court system. I don’t love that we have to do that, but at the end of the day, if not ABA, who? I think ABA, above all other trade associations, needs to play the lead role here, and I think they are.”
“He wants to learn and he’s constantly trying to understand all sides of the issue,” adds Tedesco. “You will not find a more passionate leader to do what’s right for this industry.”
