Fifth Third Bancorp

What does Fifth Third Bancorp own?
Fifth Third Bancorp owns Fifth Third Bank, National Association, which operates approximately 1,500 branches across the Midwest, Southeast, Texas, Arizona, and California. Following the February 2026 Comerica merger, all former Comerica operations run under the Fifth Third brand on a single platform.

Is Fifth Third Bancorp publicly traded?
Yes. Fifth Third trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker FITB. It transferred its listing from Nasdaq to the NYSE in June 2026 in what the exchange described as the largest bank listing transfer in history.

Why is it called Fifth Third?
The name comes from the 1909 Cincinnati merger of the Fifth National Bank and the Third National Bank, which formed the Fifth-Third National Bank of Cincinnati. The bank itself traces to the Bank of the Ohio Valley, founded in 1858.

Where is Fifth Third headquartered?
Fifth Third Bancorp is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, at Fifth Third Center downtown. Cincinnati has been the bank's home since its founding in 1858.

Did Fifth Third acquire Comerica?
Yes. Fifth Third completed its approximately $10.9 billion all-stock acquisition of Comerica on February 1, 2026, creating the ninth-largest U.S. bank. The technology and brand conversion finished over Labor Day weekend 2026, retiring the Comerica name.

Who owns Fifth Third Bancorp?
Fifth Third is an independent public company owned by its shareholders, mostly large institutional investors. No parent company or controlling family owns the bank.

How big is Fifth Third after the Comerica deal?
The combined bank holds more than $300 billion in assets, operates approximately 1,500 branches and 21,300 ATMs, and serves customers across 17 of the 20 fastest-growing large U.S. metropolitan markets. It plans to grow to about 1,750 branches by 2030.

Fifth Third traces its lineage to the Bank of the Ohio Valley, founded in Cincinnati in 1858, when the city was a major river port and commercial hub west of the Appalachians. The institution passed through several charters and mergers in the late 19th century, and by 1908 two of its successors, the Fifth National Bank and the Third National Bank, combined. The merged bank took the name Fifth-Third National Bank of Cincinnati in 1909.

The bank grew with Cincinnati through the 20th century, financing the city's manufacturing, consumer goods, and retail businesses. It was an early adopter of the holding company structure, forming Fifth Third Bancorp in the 1970s, and spent the following decades acquiring community banks across Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

Expansion accelerated in the 1990s and 2000s as the bank pushed into Florida, Michigan, Illinois, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia through acquisitions and branch building. It also built a payments and processing business, now called Commercial Payments, that became one of its most valuable fee generators.

The 2008 financial crisis tested the franchise. Fifth Third took $3.4 billion in TARP funds, which it repaid in 2011, and restructured under CEO Kevin Kabat. The bank emerged smaller in geographic ambition but stronger in capital, and it spent the 2010s rebuilding in Midwest and Southeast growth markets.

Two deals in that period set up the Comerica play. In 2018 the bank merged with MB Financial of Chicago for roughly $4.7 billion, scaling up in Chicago, and it built out its payments and point-of-sale lending businesses through smaller acquisitions. By the early 2020s management was openly signaling interest in a transformational merger if the right partner appeared.

Tim Spence became CEO in 2021 and steered the bank toward faster-growing southern markets, including new branch networks in the Southeast. The defining move came in October 2025, when Fifth Third announced an all-stock acquisition of Comerica Incorporated of Dallas valued at approximately $10.9 billion. Comerica shareholders received 1.8663 Fifth Third shares per Comerica share.

The merger closed on February 1, 2026, creating the ninth-largest U.S. bank with about $294 billion in assets. Over Labor Day weekend 2026, the bank completed the technology and brand conversion of roughly 600,000 customer accounts and 293 banking centers across Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas, retiring the Comerica name after 176 years. The combined company plans to operate about 1,750 branches by 2030, with more than half in the Southeast, Texas, Arizona, and California.

Fifth Third publishes annual ESG reporting covering climate commitments, supplier standards, and community investment. The company is not a Certified B Corporation and holds no major third-party sustainability certifications; disclosures are self-reported against standard frameworks.

The bank's most measurable commitments are financial inclusion programs and community investment pledges in low and moderate income areas, including dedicated branch and digital initiatives in underserved neighborhoods. It has set operational emissions targets and reports lending to renewable energy projects, though these are self-reported metrics.

Fifth Third also operates the Fifth Third Foundation and one of the larger regional-bank community development loan programs, and it has published racial equity and economic mobility commitments tied to its Cincinnati headquarters.

Fifth Third's most notable recent credit event was its exposure to Tricolor Holdings, a subprime auto lender that collapsed amid fraud allegations in September 2025. The bank disclosed a related loss of approximately $178 million, which management called a blemish on an otherwise strong credit year. The broader Tricolor collapse drew federal fraud charges against the lender's executives.

The bank also carries a well-documented older regulatory record. In 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Justice ordered Fifth Third to pay $18 million over discriminatory auto loan pricing and $3 million for deceptive marketing of credit card add-on products. In 2020, the CFPB sued the bank over unauthorized account openings, a case Fifth Third resolved with a $15 million penalty in 2024 while agreeing to remediate affected customers.

The Comerica integration has drawn ordinary merger scrutiny, including community group commitments around branch closures and lending in acquired markets. No material regulatory action against the bank is outstanding as of late 2026.