By AP/KWMU
St. Louis, MO – Allegiant Bancorp will no longer be a St. Louis-based banking company. That's because Cleveland-based National City will announced on Thursday that it's buying Allegiant for $475 million dollars. Allegiant is currently the biggest publicly held banking company based in St. Louis.
National City is one of the nation's ten largest bank holding companies. It has more than 1,000 bank branches and loan and investment offices throughout the country.
Allegiant started in 1989 as Allegiant National Bank in Kahoka, Missouri. It grew from $11 million in assets to more than $1 billion in its first decade, and has more than doubled in size since then.