Chris Cumming

Georgia once was known as the state hit with the most bank failures. Renasant's agreement to buy Heritage Financial in Albany, Ga., is the latest of several deals where buyers have paid strong premiums to enter or expand in the state.

In at least three recent instances, trust-preferred investors have filed lawsuits against lenders who either bought or sold banks in transactions designed to bypass such debtholders.

The Freedom Bank of Virginia has extended the deadline for its $4 million stock offering in response to investors' requests for more time.

Two community banks recently were permitted to transfer cash to their holding companies. It could be a sign that regulators are changing their attitudes toward such payments now that banks have healthier capital levels.

UMB Bank's strong fee revenue and cheap deposits give it leeway to compete on loan pricing, employing a strategy often used by much larger banks. Mike Hagedorn, the 100-year-old bank's chief executive, also discussed UMB's renewed interest in disciplined M&A.

Steven Sugarman, chief executive at Banc of California, recently completed a large branch acquisition after a public battle with an advocacy group. In a recent interview, he discussed that process as well as the bank's busy year — both the good and the bad.

Pennant Management, which says it bought $179 million in bogus USDA-backed loans, claims the agency put up barriers to verifying the loans that indirectly enabled the alleged fraud.

Prime brokerage clients (read hedge funds) are the latest kind of customer being cut loose by banks as they curtail business with parties deemed high risk. Other banks are being careful about the castoffs they recruit, and nonbank brokers are on the rise.

The ousted founders of CertusBank in Greenville, S.C., have filed a new lawsuit against a hedge fund investor.

Puerto Rico's economy has been in disarray for eight years, and it's taken many banks down with it. OFG weathered the financial crisis and is considering how to capitalize on its status as the island's healthiest bank.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the founders of CertusBank that claimed they were fired as part of a racist conspiracy at the Columbia, S.C., company.

The $1.5 billion-asset bank lost $15 million in the third quarter, its twelfth straight quarterly loss, according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. call report made public Friday.

Megabanks continue to increase their share of personal trust and fiduciary assets, leaving most small banks on the margins of the business. But community banks could stage a comeback by focusing on quality service and the slightly less-rich.

Community banks in the Northeast have gotten healthier in the past year, and loan growth has nearly doubled. Now OCC officials are worried that banks may be overstretching to protect their thin profit margins.

Citi's sponsorship of a bike-sharing program in New York has been a marketing coup. Can the bank achieve similar success in Miami?

A Minnesota community bank has made an offer to buy American Bank of St. Paul in what would be the first time a bank was forced into a sale over unpaid trust-preferred debt.

The price of crude oil has fallen 25% in four months, but banks most closely tied to the energy industry aren't worried. They say risk-mitigation strategies make a bust unlikely, and it would take a severe and prolonged slump to hurt credit quality.

To win over younger customers, banks must offer free products that work straight out of the box, while also reducing red tape. To hire the best millennial-generation employees, banks need to appeal to younger workers' global values.

John Ikard, a Colorado bank CEO and incoming chairman of the American Bankers Association, hopes to score a few legislative victories on behalf of bankers, who he says have spent years on the defensive.

New York regulator Benjamin Lawsky may use the cybersecurity rules he's proposed for virtual-currency companies as a model for traditional banks. That would subject the financial institutions his agency supervises to the most stringent data-security rules anywhere.