Truist marks the Atlanta skyline

Truist will soon have his name in the spotlight atop Atlanta’s second-tallest building.

The company will install signage on Saturday morning, using a helicopter to lower lettering on the 60-story office tower, below the bank’s logo.

The streets surrounding Truist Plaza will be closed to cars and pedestrians during installation, said Mike McCoy, a spokesman for Truist.

At 871 feet, Truist Plaza is visible for miles in all directions, and signage should be easily visible from the Downtown Connector, McCoy said. Atlanta’s tallest building, the 1,023-foot Bank of America Plaza, has no sign at the top, so Truist will have the tallest sign in town.

Truist will begin replacing SunTrust signage in branches and ATMs early this year. It has already begun phasing out the SunTrust branding on mobile apps and online platforms.

In Chattanooga, Truist placed its sign atop the 20-story former SunTrust Bank building last year.

Truist Bank was created in December 2019 when Atlanta-based SunTrust merged with BB&T. The new company moved its headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina. Truist has reduced the size of its metro Atlanta-based workforce, although it still employs 8,500 people in Georgia.

Truist is the largest bank in metro Atlanta with about 25% of the region’s market share, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Truist is the second largest bank in metropolitan Chattanooga with $2 billion in local deposits.

GM is reorganizing its factory to make electric vehicle motors

General Motors says it will spend about $154 million to upgrade an aging plant near Buffalo, New York, so it can be a key component for electric vehicle motors.

The automaker says it will add about 230 jobs at the Lockport plant, about 30 miles northeast of Buffalo, to build stator modules, the part that creates a magnetic field to spin the engine. The part will go into the engines of new electric trucks and SUVs.

In addition to the renovation, the money will go towards the purchase and installation of the equipment needed to manufacture the new part.

Currently, the Lockport plant has approximately 1,500 workers making radiators, condensers, heater cores, oil coolers and other parts for internal combustion engines in trucks and SUVs. The new positions would be filled between 2023 and 2026, the company said in a statement.

GM says plant renovations will begin immediately. The factory built in 1910 will continue to manufacture combustion engine parts.

GM has set a goal of selling only electric passenger vehicles by 2035. It plans to spend $35 billion to roll out more than 30 new battery-powered vehicles globally by 2025, aiming to overturn Tesla as the leader in electric vehicle sales.

Nursing home operator charged with tax evasion

The operator of a bankrupt multi-state retirement home chain failed to pay $29.5 million in payroll taxes and unemployment taxes for its employees at 95 facilities it operated in 11 states, officials said. said federal prosecutors.

Authorities arrested Joseph Schwartz, 62, of Suffern, New York, on Thursday and charged him in federal court in New Jersey with willful failure to pay employment taxes, evading unemployment taxes and failure to file annual financial reports.m According to authorities, his New Jersey-based Skyline management group had about 15,000 employees and Schwartz failed to pay taxes from mid-2017 to June 2018.

Prosecutors also alleged that Schwartz failed to file annual financial reports regarding Skyline’s 401K retirement plan contributions that are automatically deducted from an employee’s gross pay.

“Each count of willful failure to collect, account for and pay employment taxes and tax evasion carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000 “, prosecutors said. Evading unemployment contributions carries a maximum of 5 years in prison and each count of 401K benefits plan fraud carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Schwartz was also sued in federal court in 2020 by former employees from multiple states who claimed they didn’t have health insurance even though money was deducted from their wages. The employees allegedly discovered they did not have health insurance when they were billed for medical procedures. A woman reportedly ended up with a $50,000 bill.

2 Alabama workers attempted to rob Chick-Fil-A

Two former Alabama Chick-fil-A employees have been sentenced to prison for their role in a scheme to steal nearly $500,000 from the Georgia-based fast food company.

A federal judge in Alabama handed down the sentences on Thursday, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

The two former employees were administrators of a Chick-fil-A site in Birmingham.

A plea agreement states that the two devised a scheme to divert $492,000 in payments from Chick-fil-A customers in the city’s Five Points South neighborhood and instead direct them to bank accounts under their control. Most of the payments were for catering orders from large customers, prosecutors said.

The men used fraudulent emails and digital payment accounts that looked like official Chick-fil-A accounts, prosecutors said.

Larry James Black, Jr., 37, of Center Point, Alabama, was sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.

Joshua Daniel Powell, 40, of Moody, Alabama, was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Powell had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

— Compiled by Dave Flessner