He wanted to build up an investment bank rapidly, but the credit markets slowed that down. Now Cummins wants to build a team that is mentioned in the same sentence as Wall Street's bulge-bracket firms. SunTrust's investment bank is growing, with hires in debt and equity capital markets, mergers and acquisitions and other types of advisory work, and he said, the $170 billion-asset firm uses its balance sheet to bring in mandates. "The opportunity I saw was that we could … integrate the investment and corporate banking, integrate the equity capital raising with the debt capital raising and take the M&A business and reorient it from a boutique business that was Rolodex-driven to one that was organized by sectors or industry expertise, and align it with our banking, which would be sector-driven," Cummins said in a telephone interview. SunTrust is playing "the universal banking model investment banking game."