# Trustmark Sold 34 Branches for $91.7 Million and Leased Them Back. The Rent Is $6.4 Million a Year.

> A Sept. 3 filing shows the Jackson-based bank sold 34 branches to Blue Owl Real Estate Capital and leased them back for 15 years, then swapped $629.9 million of low-yield securities for higher-yielding ones to offset the gain. The bank says no branch will close.

*Business · By Jackson Wire Staff · September 22, 2026*

Trustmark Bank sold 34 of its own branch buildings for $91.7 million on Sept. 3 and immediately leased them back, according to an 8-K the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 10. The buyer is a group of entities affiliated with Blue Owl Real Estate Capital LLC. The branches sit in Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama and Texas.

The lease runs 15 years, with three renewal options of five years each. Initial aggregate annual rent is $6.4 million, and it escalates 1.5% every year, including in any renewal term the bank exercises. Trustmark Corporation, the Nasdaq-listed parent, is headquartered at 248 East Capitol Street in Jackson.

That rent is the number that matters to anyone watching the bank's Jackson footprint. At $6.4 million a year, the bank is paying roughly 7% of the $91.7 million sale price annually to keep occupying buildings it used to own. Over the initial 15-year term, before any renewals, the escalating payments compound to well above $100 million in total rent, a figure the Wire calculated from the 1.5% annual step-up disclosed in the filing.

The filing states plainly that the bank will not close any branch or exit any market as part of the transaction. That is the commitment readers should hold it to, because the economics of a sale-leaseback change the moment a location stops earning its keep. Once the building is someone else's asset, the only question about a weak branch is whether its rent is covered.

The deal produced a pre-tax gain of about $61.5 million after transaction expenses. Trustmark then did something that makes the transaction close to a wash on paper: it reclassified its held-to-maturity securities to available-for-sale, sold roughly $629.9 million of lower-yielding investments with a weighted-average yield of about 1.4%, and bought roughly $628.0 million of securities yielding about 5.0%.

That securities swap generated a pre-tax loss of about $61.5 million, almost exactly offsetting the gain on the branch sale. The two moves together are a balance-sheet repositioning dressed as a real estate deal. The bank traded a one-time gain for a permanently higher yield on roughly $628 million of investments, and traded owned real estate for a long-term rent obligation.

The math on the yield swap is the part worth keeping. Moving $628 million from a 1.4% yield to a 5.0% yield adds roughly $22.6 million a year in interest income, by the Wire's calculation. That is more than three times the $6.4 million in initial annual rent the bank now owes Blue Owl. On the numbers in the filing, the repositioning pays for the lease several times over in the first year.

The exhibits attached to the 8-K are the purchase and sale agreement and the form of lease agreement. The schedules and similar attachments were omitted under SEC rules, but the company undertook to furnish supplemental copies on request. That means the specific rent allocation by property, and the identity of which Mississippi branches are in the pool, are not in the public filing.

Trustmark is not the first institution to monetize its branch network this way. Sale-leasebacks let a bank pull capital out of real estate it has owned for decades and redeploy it, at the cost of a fixed obligation that shows up in future earnings. The trade is attractive when the sale price is high relative to the rent, and when the proceeds can be put to work at a much higher yield, which is exactly what this filing describes.

For Jackson, the practical question is what a 15-year lease with a 1.5% annual escalator does to the bank's cost structure in its home market. Trustmark is one of the largest employers and one of the most visible corporate presences downtown. Its lease obligations are now a line item that did not exist before Sept. 3, and they will grow every year regardless of what happens to deposits or loan demand.

What's next: the bank's next quarterly filing will be the first to carry a full quarter of the new rent expense and the higher securities yield side by side, which is when the net effect on earnings becomes visible rather than projected. Trustmark reports on a calendar-year schedule, so the third-quarter filing covering the period that includes the Sept. 3 closing is the document to watch. The company has not disclosed a date for that release.

Readers who want the property-level detail should watch for the supplemental schedules the company agreed to furnish on request, and for any Mississippi county land records filings transferring the individual branch parcels to the Blue Owl affiliates. Those recordings, not the 8-K, will show which Jackson-area addresses changed hands and at what allocated price.

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