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Clifford Isroff, the lead director of FirstMerit in Akron, Ohio, died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 79.
July 2 -
Fair-value accounting and merger costs took big bites out of Western Alliance Bancorp. in Phoenix last quarter.
July 27 -
The Cleveland company, which this spring said it had decided to start originating its own mortgage loans again, shared more details on the start date of this new effort and the rationale behind it.
July 16
FirstMerit in Akron, Ohio, reported lower second-quarter profit on shrinking interest and fee income, despite successful cost-cutting measures.
The $25.3 billion-asset company's
Net interest income fell 5.3% to $185.1 million. Total loans rose 4.9% to $15.7 billion. However, interest income from loans fell 6.2% to $161.9 million. The net interest margin, on a tax-equivalent basis, tightened to 3.39%.
Noninterest income fell 8.2% to $66.6 million, on lower income from deposit service charges, loan sales and servicing income and other operating income. FirstMerit's noninterest income was reduced by $1.8 million from costs to close branches.
Noninterest expense fell 3.4% to $161.7 million. FirstMerit "achieved operating expense levels within our longer term cost-reduction goals," Paul Greig, chairman and chief executive, said in a news release. The drop came mostly from reductions in salaries and other operating expenses. The efficiency ratio worsened to 62.37%.
