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TWST: Define the grouping itself, and then give us an overview and your expectations for 2001 for the group. What are the dynamics from 2000 that you’re using as you set those expectations?

Mr. Marinac: First, I am the team leader for the bank team, so Jefferson Harralson and I oversee and cover the majority of our companies under our research. We also have a great team underneath us, and it’s important because we cover officially about 40 banks in the Southeast and Southwest, and a handful in the Midwest — sort of a Sun Belt franchise; that’s probably three-quarters of our business. The remainder tends to be an increasing focus on community banks, and Jennifer Demba, an associate, oversees the work in that area. Over the last year and a half we have been publishing state wide reports on community banks as a means of getting some attention, and also as a discipline for us to have a broader awareness and broader understanding from an analytical standpoint of how the community banks are performing.

Synovus (NYSE:SNV) has historically been a very consistent and really outstanding performer. Synovus also is large in fee income, primarily because of data processing. Data processing is driven through their credit card processing subsidiary, Total Systems Services (NYSE:TSS). Total Systems is also a publicly traded company and Synovus owns slightly over 80% of Total Systems’ shares. But having said that, Synovus continues to see excellent performance on its bank, which still drives 65% of the revenues of this company. Arguably, the bank side has actually weathered the storms very nicely over the last year and a half. We now have credit quality being on top of investors’ minds and the company should sustain a slowdown quite well. When margins and growth of spread were under pressure during 1999 and 2000 as the Fed was raising rates, Synovus actually held up okay as well. So they’ve been able to manage through some tough times before, and we think that today is no different from a pure banking perspective. The third leg of the stool at Synovus is the wealth management business. Wealth management, or trust, is an area where Synovus historically has not focused heavily, and we’ve seen a complete attitude change on this in the last year. Importantly, the company has the right mind-set to succeed in this business. They also have the right platform. Synovus is unique in that they have a decentralized operating structure. Most banks tend to be centralized, they tend to work off of one logo, one entire branch network. Synovus owns 100% of nearly 40 affiliate banks that actually operate independently out in the community within their state footprint of Georgia, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. Synovus’ bandwidth can maintain this independence, this decentralized structure, while still being able to execute very well at growing earnings. They’re going to take that approach on the bank side and actually increase the product suite by offering financial planning, trust, securities, and insurance services through this division. This will build a nice base of fee income over the next several years. Now, revenues in this portion of the company are small today at only 3%, but in two years’ time that can double, if not triple, and the wealth management business is something to take seriously when analyzing Synovus, because it is going to be a more meaningful part of its revenue and EPS stream going forward.