A US-based financial services and bank holding company. Its subsidiary First Horizon Bank has provided credit and loans to private prison corporation CoreCivic.
First Horizon Corporation, formerly First Horizon National Corporation, is a financial services and bank holding company headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. It conducts banking operations primarily through its principal subsidiary, First Horizon Bank (formerly First Tennessee Bank). As of 2020, First Horizon Bank operated over 490 banking offices in 12 states, employed 6,802 people, and reported an annual revenue of $3.2 billion.
First Horizon has been identified as one of the major financial institutions supporting private prison and immigrant detention companies. First Horizon Bank is a member of a syndicate of banks that has extended hundreds of millions of dollars in revolving lines of credit and term loans to CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison and immigrant detention companies in the U.S. CoreCivic relies on banks and financial institutions to fund its operations and expansion into additional carceral industries.
In 2018, CoreCivic entered into a $1 billion credit agreement with a syndicate of banks that included Bank of America, Citizens Bank, Fifth Third Bank, First Tennessee Bank (now First Horizon Bank), JPMorgan Chase, Pinnacle Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, SunTrust Bank (now Truist Financial Corporation), and Synovus Bank. Replacing CoreCivic's previous $900 million credit facility, this agreement consists of an $800 million revolving line of credit and a $200 million term loan. First Horizon Bank, acting as a lender in the deal, committed $30 million and $7.5 million, respectively, to CoreCivic's revolving line of credit and term loan. The agreement is set to expire in 2023.
CoreCivic's Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mark Emkes, formerly served as a director and chair of the audit committee of First Horizon.
In 2020, Figure 8 Investment Strategies submitted a shareholder proposal requesting that First Horizon adopt a comprehensive human rights policy to address its exposure to corporations, such as CoreCivic, that "interfere with human rights, especially on issues of detention."
As of October 2021, First Horizon has made no public statement indicating that it will sever its business relations with CoreCivic.