There were a few reasons why the deal materialized the way it did. For one thing, there were a lot of opportunities for cost synergies. Both were massive regional banks that operated in many of the same parts of the United States, and there was little reason to believe there would be any regulatory barriers to the deal. It was the largest merger between two U.S. banks since the 2007-09 financial crisis.
The deal was finalized in December 2019. The combined business has about 10 million households as customers. At the time of the deal, William Rogers, who was the CEO of SunTrust, became the leader of the combined business, which was renamed Truist. However, the full integration and rebranding took a couple of years.