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To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (366856)	4/28/2008 8:51:16 AM
From: ldo79	Respond to of 436258

First Horizon to sell $600 million in stock, change dividend By Kevin Kingsbury Last update: 8:27 a.m. EDT April 28, 2008 Tennessee bank First Horizon National Corp. (FHN) announced plans to sell up to $600 million in common stock and change its dividend payments to stock, showing even smaller financial firms are going to the capital-raising well and taking other moves to preserve capital. The company gave no reason in a statement for the stock sale, which will give underwriting the option to sell an additional 15%. First Horizon on Friday filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell an undisclosed amount of mixed securities from time to time; the stock fell 7.9% to $10.75. There was no premarket trading Monday. In addition, First Horizon will stop distributing cash dividends after the dividend payable July 1. Instead, payments will be made with 20 cents a share in First Horizon stock, matching the cash rate. First Horizon was among the banks eager to expand in recent years. In the mid-1990s, it began buying mortgage companies around the country. A few years ago, First Horizon decided its mortgage customers may also be interested in other services. In markets including Atlanta, Baltimore and Dallas, it started turning its mortgage offices into retail-banking branches, according to analysts and a company statements. By last summer, as more homeowners around the country began having trouble repaying their mortgages, the bank retrenched. It set plans to sell the nearly three dozen new branches and focused again on its 200 or so locations in Tennessee. First Horizon is also scaling back its mortgage business, shuttering offices and laying off workers. Earlier this year, the bank announced it would discontinue its national home-building and commercial real-estate lending programs, and would focus on Tennessee and the Southeast.