Legacy Bank & Trust acquisition completed by Arkansas bank

Roughly seven months after the deal was announced, Arkadelphia, Arkansas-based Southern Bancorp Inc., the holding company for Southern Bancorp Bank, has closed on its acquisition of Ozarks Heritage Financial Group Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiary, Legacy Bank & Trust Co., headquartered in Springfield.  

With the deal’s closure, announced Jan. 5 following regulatory and shareholder approval, the combined banking institution has a total of $4.7 billion in assets. The planned acquisition was first announced in June 2025, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting. 

Officials declined to disclose the purchase price or terms of the acquisition. However, some potential insight into the deal can be found in an October 2025 call report on the Federal Deposit Insurance Co.’s website noting Legacy Bank & Trust’s equity capital is roughly $230.5 million.

Southern Bancorp Bank has 56 locations in Arkansas and Mississippi and holds $2.8 billion in assets. Legacy Bank & Trust, with $1.9 billion in assets, has 10 locations in Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Combined, the workforce for the companies comprises nearly 800 employees, said Darrin Williams, CEO of Southern Bancorp Inc., who noted his bank constitutes over three-quarters of that total. Both banks are certified community development financial institutions, which are lenders with a mission to provide financing and support to underserved communities.

“This is a huge opportunity for us,” Williams said Jan. 6 at Legacy Bank’s 3250 E. Sunshine St. headquarters. “We’re pretty excited about the acquisition of Legacy because they’ve had tremendous impact. They’ve also been a CDFI for years, and combining these two CDFIs is really powerful.”

Williams was among Southern Bancorp officials in town to celebrate the acquisition closing and to meet with Legacy staff.

With the addition of Legacy Bank & Trust, Southern Bancorp’s bank network spans five states, along with a mortgage division serving customers throughout the southern United States. Founded in 1986, officials say Southern Bancorp is one of America’s oldest and largest CDFIs.

“What’s really beautiful is there’s not a lot of overlap. There’s no geographic overlap, and there’s not a lot of product overlap,” Williams said.

Officials previously told SBJ that conversations on the acquisition began early last year, and they added that no branch closures are anticipated in the deal. Williams said Southern is focused on expanding its market reach. Acquiring Legacy will allow for expanded and additional areas of focus at Southern, such as its secondary mortgage loan program, he said.

Williams said Legacy looks very similar to Southern as both serve a lot of rural towns. In 70% of Southern’s markets, the bank serves counties with fewer than 20,000 people.

“We’re in a lot of rural communities that don’t always have access to capital and credit that large institutions have abandoned,” Williams said, noting the company has a tagline of “Wealth builders for everyone.”

“This is a great marriage because (Legacy’s) also in some of those rural communities, but they also are in Tulsa and the Dallas-Fort Worth market, which are larger communities where there’s opportunity for increased growth,” he added.

John Everett, president and CEO of Legacy Bank & Trust, said his company became a CDFI around a decade ago and has been watching Southern Bancorp ever since.

“They are one of the leaders in the CDFI space,” Everett said. “We became familiar with them, started watching and started following and saying, ‘OK, that’s who we want to model ourselves after.’ And at that point, we’re a $110 million [asset] bank.”

Legacy Bank has since grown its assets to $1.9 billion, Everett said, adding he considers his company to now be on a scale with Southern Bancorp – something he couldn’t say several years ago.

“We also knew this is someone in the future we think we want to partner with. And we probably knew that back then,” Everett said. “We took Legacy as far as we could take it. We needed to combine forces with Southern to be better at things we weren’t as good at and to help them be better.”

Williams told SBJ in a June 2025 interview that the Southern board used $250 million in federal Emergency Capital Investment Program funds in 2022 to shore up operations, employees and technology to prepare for a large bank acquisition. He said the acquisition will allow Southern to build on areas including Legacy’s work in the multifamily and low-income housing and tax credit spaces.

Taking time
While Southern Bancorp and Legacy Bank have a combined physical presence in just five states, Williams said both are making their presence felt nationally. Legacy has funded low-income housing projects in 27 states and Southern has customers in all 50 states through its fintech platforms, such as Elevault, a high-yield, mobile savings account.

“Don’t be surprised if you see additional branches, but we also want to grow digitally,” he said, noting plans for more locations are yet to launch.

Additionally, Williams said a capital raise is in the works.

“With banking, you can only grow as fast as capital,” he said, noting details, such as when and the amount to be raised, are still being determined. “That capital allows us to expand and grow. But it’s our desire to keep going. We believe that there are markets across the country that need our brand of banking.”

Everett said that he and the entire Legacy Bank & Trust leadership team remain in place. Leadership of the combined bank is still to be determined, he said.

“How we combine the entities and how we structure all that, we’re going to integrate the systems,” Williams said. “We’re going to take our time to do that right – dot our I’s and cross our T’s. We anticipate that happening toward the end of Q3 or the beginning of Q4 when the systems will merge.”

It will take most of the year to officially put the banks together, which Everett said is longer than most banking acquisitions.

“We intentionally took more time on this one,” he said, noting there’s determination to ensure the work is done with minimal interruption for customers. “We want to make sure it is 100% right. You get one chance at this merger. We’re building these teams together mutually.”

Future impact
Officials say Legacy Bank & Trust customers will see no immediate changes to their accounts or banking experience. The local banking company will continue operating under its current name, systems and brand until the planned conversion later this year.

“We think it makes sense now as we bring these two institutions together that we will change the name,” Williams said of the process that is being handled internally. “I wish I could tell you, but I have no idea what that name is. I didn’t realize it was so hard to go through trademark. We’re trying to find a name that works.”

During this period, Southern Bancorp Inc. will operate as a multibank financial holding company, overseeing both Southern Bancorp Bank and Legacy Bank & Trust, as well as Southern Bancorp Community Partners, a nonprofit loan fund and financial development organization, officials say.

“Through this whole process, we’re always very cognizant of the customer impact. And so that comes No. 1,” Everett said, noting that both Southern and Legacy have strong experience in the acquisition process. “We look at what’s the customer impact and you minimize the impact, and you communicate absolutely as much as possible. You can’t overcommunicate something like this.”

This deal marks the largest of nearly 20 acquisitions for Southern, Williams said, while Everett said his company has participated in three prior acquisitions.

JPMorgan Chase served as financial adviser and Nelson Mullins served as legal adviser to Southern Bancorp for the transaction. Ozarks Heritage Financial Group Inc. hired Stephens Inc. as its financial adviser and Stinson LLP as legal counsel.