Facilitating Commerce & Opportunities:
Our Hancock Bank Legacy

Hancock County Bank (circa 1899)

One hundred eight years ago, 19 enterprising Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, men and women responded to South Mississippi’s bustling turn-of-the-century economy by establishing the Hancock County Bank on core values of honor & integrity, strength & stability, commitment to service, teamwork, and personal responsibility. From that point, our company assumed a pivotal role in helping the people of our communities achieve their financial goals and dreams and in facilitating commerce and opportunities for people across our greater Gulf Coast. Since first opening our doors on October 9, 1899, with $10,000 in capitalization and $8,277.41 in first-day deposits, Hancock Bank has evolved as a premier regional financial services leader and a catalyst for strategic Gulf South growth.

Today, Hancock Holding Company (NASDAQ: HBHC) — parent company of Hancock Bank (Mississippi), Hancock Bank of Louisiana, Hancock Bank of Florida, and Hancock Bank of Alabama — has assets of approximately $6.0 billion. Hancock offers comprehensive financial solutions through 164 banking and financial services offices and 132 automated teller machines across South Mississippi, south central Louisiana, southern Alabama, and north Florida, including subsidiaries Hancock Investment Services, Inc., Hancock Insurance Agency and its divisions of Ross King Walker and J. Everett Eaves, and Harrison Finance Company; and corporate trust offices in Gulfport, MS, Jackson, MS, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. Additional corporate information and 24-hour online banking and bill pay services are available at www.hancockbank.com.

Consistently rated among the nation’s strongest, safest financial institutions by Veribanc, Inc., and BauerFinancial Services, Inc., Hancock is the only financial services company headquartered in the Gulf South ranked among the top three top-performing financial institutions in America, as listed by Bank Director magazine.

The Early Days

As the South Mississippi lumber, cotton, wool, turkey, and produce trades thrived during the early 1900s and as the Mississippi Gulf Coast evolved as a popular tourist destination, Hancock County Bank began cultivating opportunities for expansion. Within weeks of signing the bank’s charter, the original board of directors purchased a site at Main Street and South Beach Boulevard and initiated construction of Bay St. Louis’s first two-story brick building to house the Hancock County Bank, the post office, and the United States Customs Office. The main Bay St. Louis branch still operates from that building.

Hancock County Bank opened the first branch of a Mississippi Coast bank at Pearlington on January 8, 1902. On April 29, 1902, the bank established a branch at Pass Christian, a popular “Newport-of-the-South” retreat for Northerners fleeing brutal winters and affluent New Orleanians and North Mississippians seeking relief from sweltering summer heat. As the Pearlington branch closed in 1918, a Logtown branch opened and operated until 1937, when the South Mississippi timber supply dwindled and the fervor of early saw mill production paled.

Mississippi Gulf Coast "Bathing Beauties" (1920s)

The Mississippi Gulf Coast reveled in the gaiety and prosperity of the “Roaring Twenties.” The first banana ship arrived at the Port of Gulfport; and 14 new hotels drew hoards of tourists to sparkling ballrooms, beachside tea dances, and luxurious rooms with a view. In 1927 Hancock County Bank opened a branch in Long Beach, a hamlet with a truck farming trade and volume of red radish and bean exports that earned the community notoriety as the “Radish Capital of the World.” Similar to today’s pretzels and peanuts, Long Beach’s radishes were popular snacks served with beer in northeastern taverns. The “Long Red” radish fields and trade succumbed to real estate fever sweeping the Gulf South in the 1920s and, ultimately, to the crushing economic blow of the 1928 stock market crash.

Gulfport domicile (circa 1933)

Gulf South Growth

Through the Depression, advent of the Atomic Age, Baby Boom, and Space Age, social revolution, economic uncertainty, Generations X and Y, and a new century, Hancock Bank has remained a bulwark of financial stability, instigating Gulf Coast economic growth and establishing new branches and locations through acquisitions, mergers, and de novo

Hancock Bank Centre at CitiPlace Baton Rouge, LA

offices. Construction of a new corporate tower — One Hancock Plaza — in the early 1980s spawned downtown Gulfport’s Harbor Square development; and a $50-million post-Hurricane Katrina restoration of that corporate tower in 2006 led the way for a new Main Street revitalization movement.

Hancock’s 1990 merger with American Bank of Baton Rouge established a formidable Hancock Bank presence in Louisiana. The success of that Baton Rouge venture prompted subsequent expansions through Livingston, Washington, Tangipahoa, St. Tammany, and West Feliciana parishes and 15 Louisiana communities. Between 1973 and 1998, Hancock acquired 14 Mississippi and Louisiana financial institutions, increasing corporate assets from $158 million to $2.7 billion in less than 25 years. In January 1999, American Security Bank (ASB) in Ville Platte, LA, became a wholly owned holding company subsidiary, adding 18 new branches in five Louisiana parishes to the Hancock family. As ASB joined Hancock Bank of Louisiana (HBLA) in July 1999, corporate assets hit $3 billion. In late summer 2001, HBLA opened the Hancock Bank Centre at CitiPlace, a flourishing Baton Rouge residential and commercial development within minutes of the Louisiana State University campus.

With the 2001 acquisition of 97-year-old, Purvis, Mississippi, based Lamar Bank, Hancock welcomed south central Mississippi customers from economic hubs such as Hattiesburg — home of the University of Southern Mississippi and William Carey College — to the Hancock corporate family.

In February 2003, Hancock Bank established a long-awaited presence south of Lake Pontchartrain through the purchase of two Dryades Savings Bank, F.S.B., branches in the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, communities of Metairie and Kenner. Hancock Bank ushered in the 2004 New Year by opening a third Jefferson Parish branch at Clearview, an upscale Metairie retail and residential district adjacent to one of the country’s most highly traveled crossroads, and by consummating the purchase of Magna Insurance Company to expand Hancock’s insurance business footprint through 16 states. A new financial center at Carondelet and Common streets in New Orleans’s Central Business District and permanent facilities on LaPalco Boulevard in the Crescent City’s West Bank region and at Elmwood in Jefferson, LA, debuted in late 2007.

In July 2003, Hancock launched eastward expansion by opening the company’s Mobile, Alabama, Business Financial Center in the thriving western region of that Bay City. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, the State of Alabama granted Hancock Bank limited retail banking privileges to help displaced storm evacuees and, ultimately, issued a Hancock Bank of Alabama charter in 2006. Hancock Bank opened its downtown Mobile financial center on Dauphin Street at historic Bienville Square in spring 2007 and newly built branches in Daphne on Alabama’s thriving Eastern Shore and at Cottage Hill in West Mobile by January 2008.

In March 2004, through the acquisition of Tallahassee’s Guaranty National Bank, Hancock Bank introduced the company’s “financial illumination” brand to Florida’s thriving capital city with a downtown financial center and four other branches within minutes of the Florida State and Florida A&M university campuses. Hancock Bank of Florida soon entered the metropolitan Pensacola market with a full-service Palafox financial center in the historic five-story Thiesen Building — built in 1901 as Pensacola’s first “skyscraper.”

Hancock’s fall 2004 acquisition of 103-year-old Ross King Walker, Inc., in Hattiesburg and summer 2005 acquisition of J. Everett Eaves, Inc. — founded in New Orleans in 1918 — considerably augmented insurance services available to Gulf South businesses and consumers through Hancock Insurance Agency (established 1902).

Leadership by Example

Carl J. Chaney, CEO  Hancock Holding Company

John M. Hairston, CEO  Hancock Holding Company

Only eight chief executives have led Hancock Bank through 108 years of financial services excellence, including bank presidents Peter Hellwege (1899-1907), Eugene H. Roberts (1908–1918), Horatio S. Weston (1918–1931), Leo W. Seal, Sr. (1932–1963), Leo W. Seal, Jr. (1963–1990), and George A. Schloegel (1990–2006). Today, Schloegel serves as Hancock Holding Company chairman and Hancock Bank president; Seal, Jr., as Hancock Bank chairman. In December 2006, Carl J. Chaney and John M. Hairston became chief executive officers of Hancock Holding Company. With a management committee representing 350-plus years of collective experience, Chaney and Hairston perpetuate Hancock’s century-old team oriented leadership-by-example traditions.

A Bright Future

One Hancock Plaza Headquarters Gulfport, MS

As a corporation, Hancock Bank has far exceeded the confines of its original woodframe site. However, the fundamental tenets upon which the company was established — honor & integrity, strength & stability, commitment to service, teamwork, and personal responsibility — remain unwavering. To us, our mission of helping people achieve their financial goals and dreams means offering unparalleled customer service and quality financial solutions designed to make today’s demanding lifestyles easier and better for our customers. We credit our successes to a zealous corporate pursuit of those objectives, to the steadfast confidence our stockholders and our customers place in Hancock Holding Company and Hancock Bank, and to our always giving our customers the financial services options they need, expect, and deserve.

Through 108 years of natural disasters, national crises, economic fluctuations, and cultural change, we have helped our customers weather literal and figurative storms and provided them a safe place to deposit their money. Likewise, we have never lost sight of our obligations to our shareholders, customers, nearly 2,000 associates, and the Gulf South communities we serve to uphold the highest standards of customer service; to reinvest time, energy, and financial resources to yield the greatest overall returns; and to foster well-planned economic development and exceptional quality of life in all of our hometowns. Whether proactively implementing new financial products and services or helping our neighbors provide for their children’s educations, we look forward to another 100 years of corporate growth and dedicated service to the communities where we live, work, and play.

The Story of Hancock Bank’s Hallmark – the Ship Island Lighthouse