A US-based financial services and bank holding company. Its subsidiary Regions Bank has provided credit and loans to private prison corporations CoreCivic and GEO Group.
Regions Financial Corporation is a financial services and bank holding company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Regions conducts banking operations through its principal subsidiary, Regions Bank. As of 2020, Regions Bank operated 1,369 total branches,—located primarily in the Southeastern U.S.—employed 19,406 people, and reported an annual revenue of $6.28 billion. Based on annual deposit market share, Regions is the largest bank in Alabama as of 2021.
Regions Financial Corporation has been identified as one of the major financial institutions supporting private prison and immigrant detention companies. Regions Bank is a member of bank syndicates that have extended hundreds of millions of dollars in revolving lines of credit, term loans, and bonds to CoreCivic and GEO Group, the largest private prison and immigrant detention companies in the U.S. These companies rely on banks and financial institutions to fund their operations and expansion into additional carceral industries.
In 2018, CoreCivic entered into a $1 billion credit agreement with a syndicate of banks that included Bank of America, Citizens Bank, Fifth Third Bank, First Tennessee Bank (now First Horizon Bank), JPMorgan Chase, Pinnacle Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, SunTrust Bank (now Truist Financial Corporation), and Synovus Bank. Replacing CoreCivic's previous $900 million credit facility, this agreement consists of an $800 million revolving line of credit and a $200 million term loan. Regions Bank, acting as a joint syndicate manager and lender in the deal, committed $96 million and $24 million, respectively, to CoreCivic's revolving line of credit and term loan. The agreement is set to expire in 2023.
In 2016, a Regions Financial Corporation subsidiary, Regions Securities LLC, became an underwriter for GEO Group and purchased $10.5 million worth of banknotes, set to expire in 2026. Regions served as part of a syndicate of banks that provided a $350 million loan. This syndicate also included Barclays, BNP Paribas, Fifth Third Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, SunTrust (now Truist Financial Corporation), TD Securities, and Wells Fargo.
In February 2021, Regions Bank announced that it would not extend additional credit to CoreCivic or provide the company with financing specifically for the construction of private prisons to be built in Alabama. Jeremy King, a spokesperson for Regions Bank, credited the "candid feedback" from activist groups like Alabama Students Against Prisons and Black Lives Matter as the impetus for this decision.
Despite its February 2021 announcement, Regions Bank succeeded U.S. Bank in becoming the new Trustee (main bank) of a $450 million bond agreement with CoreCivic in April 2021. The original agreement began in 2015 and is set to end in 2026.