[ganeumann]

Sure, but bank size falls off very quickly after the biggest four. Compass is about 3% of the size of JPMorgan by assets (source: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/03/ranking-the-50-big...), and 10% of the size of JPMorgan by branches (http://www.usbanklocations.com/bank-rank/number-of-branches....). Theirs are less than 0.7% of bank branches in the US, compared to JPMorgan's 6.6% of branches.

You can disagree with whether this means they had barely any footprint or not, I guess that's semantics, but it certainly makes more sense that they would buy them to expand, not to get rid of a competitor.