business briefs

• Eric Elliott and Angie Caldwell, Pershing Yoakley & Associates principals, have been promoted to equity principals. PYA is a national healthcare consulting and accounting firm. Elliott, a certified public accountant, has provided clients with a broad range of expertise, such as tax consulting and compliance, merger and acquisition planning, international and multi-state taxation and federal and state credits and incentives.

Caldwell, a member of PYA since 1998, consults with physician practices and healthcare systems in fair market value compensation, commercial reasonableness and contract compliance.

• Jeff Dobbs and Tom Blanchard have joined Pinnacle Financial Partners as senior vice presidents and financial advisors. Dobbs brings 13 years of experience from Regions Bank (AmSouth Bank), where he served as treasury management sales manager for 300 clients with responsibility for the East Tennessee region and North Carolina. Blanchard comes to Pinnacle from a 14-year career with SunTrust Bank, where he was branch manager of the bank’s Farragut Financial Center.

• Katrina Shelton, a mortgage professional, has joined United Community Bank in Knoxville as a mortgage loan originator. Shelton brings nearly 30 years of mortgage banking experience to her new role.

• A merger between BNC Bancorp and Pinnacle Financial Partners Inc. closed June 16, bringing Pinnacle’s urban community banking model into seven new markets in the Carolinas and Virginia. A full brand change of all BNC offices and services is expected late in the third quarter of 2017. With the completion of the merger, BNC’s president and CEO Rick Callicutt is Pinnacle’s chairman of the Carolinas and Virginia, and he will join Pinnacle’s board of directors along with Abney S. Boxley, Thomas Sloan and G. Kennedy Thompson, also from BNC’s board.

• Tony Papa has joined EXIT Real Estate Professionals Network.

• Julie Keeble and Mike Keeble have joined the team of Weichert, Realtors — Advantage Plus affiliated offices at 10160 Parkside Drive, Knoxville.

• Leighanne Covington, a Heiskell, Tennessee, native and senior vice president of TnBank, is among 164

bankers who received graduation diplomas Jan. 2 from the Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State

University.