Laid off from Atlantic Union Bank.

What Atlantic Union Bank layoffs have meant for employees

Before the American National deal closed, Atlantic Union described the job impact it expected in terms of overlap. Chief executive John Asbury said in July 2023 that overlapping branch locations in the Roanoke and Rocky Mount areas could lead to consolidation and that there would be some degree of staffing impact, Virginia Business reported, and the bank told the Federal Reserve that any closings would be due to geographic overlap between branches. The StellarOne merger's plan for back-office work ran along the same lines, with StellarOne's Christiansburg operations to be consolidated into the Ruther Glen center Union First Market already ran, according to a 2013 Virginia Business report. If your job at a bought bank overlapped with work Atlantic Union already did, the bank's statements before its deals pointed to that overlap.

Branch staff saw three rounds of closings during the pandemic, the December 2021 plan being the third, American Banker reported. For that round the bank said employees at the closing branches would be offered open positions at other branches, and that it was too early to say if the closings would mean job losses. For branch staff in 2021, then, the announced plan pointed first to a job at another branch, with any losses left undecided.

Some of these changes offered people somewhere to go first. StellarOne's displaced Christiansburg staff were to get priority for about 50 new jobs at Ruther Glen, and Asbury said the American National employees without an offer before closing would be prioritized for later openings. Distance also showed up in one contract. For the first year after closing, the American National merger agreement committed Atlantic Union to the severance in American National's disclosure schedule for employees let go in a restructuring and for those who resigned because of a relocation of more than 35 miles. Either way, they had to sign and keep a release of claims and have no individual severance agreement or change-in-control payment.

Back-office work has moved more than once. Ruther Glen, where the Christiansburg work was slated to go in 2014, had its own back-office facility on Atlantic Union's closing list in December 2021. The 2023 plan's cuts were mostly in support divisions and were spread out geographically rather than concentrated in Richmond, by Asbury's account to Richmond BizSense, and the same plan gave up some downtown office space.

The Sandy Spring merger agreement set terms for the staff Atlantic Union kept on, committing it to pay them no less than their pre-merger base salary or wage through the merger's first anniversary. The two banks had 3,000 employees between them at the closing, Richmond BizSense reported, and Atlantic Union planned 48 new positions in the Richmond region, most at its Innsbrook office. Separately, the WHD Building in Maryland's February 2025 filings sits at 17801 Georgia Avenue, the address the agreement gives for Sandy Spring Bancorp, an address match and nothing more. Maryland’s WARN log lists all three of Atlantic Union's 2025 Maryland filings as mass layoffs without recall, so none of them held out a return to those jobs.

If your claim is in Maryland, the state's rules are at Maryland unemployment benefits, and Virginia's are at Virginia unemployment benefits. If a package you're offered asks for a signed release, as the American National severance did, there's background on the give and take in negotiating a severance agreement.