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   By Allison Prang 
 

SunTrust Banks Inc. said Monday it will no longer "provide future financing to companies that manage private prisons and immigration holding facilities."

SunTrust said in a statement "this decision was made after extensive consideration of the views of our stakeholders on this deeply complex issue."

The news was earlier reported by Bloomberg News.

SunTrust is merging with BB&T Corp., based in Winston-Salem, N.C. The deal, when it was announced, had a value of $28.2 billion.

SunTrust told BB&T about its decision, a spokeswoman for SunTrust said in an email. BB&T doesn't finance private prisons, a BB&T spokesman said in an email.

A spokesman for the GEO Group Inc., one of the companies that operates these holding facilities and private prisons, said in an email the company has been banking with SunTrust for over a decade.

"The divestment efforts against our company are based on a false narrative and a deliberate mischaracterization of our role as a long-standing government services provider," the spokesman said.

Bank of America Corp. also recently said it was going to stop doing business with private prisons. But Bank of America's announcement came not long after it agreed to make a $90 million dollar loan to GEO Group, The Wall Street Journal reported. The GEO Group spokesman said Monday that the company has banked with Bank of America for more than a decade as well.

Write to Allison Prang at allison.prang@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 08, 2019 16:25 ET (20:25 GMT)

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