Commercial Banking News, Strategy & Risk Analysis
American Banker's commercial banking coverage explores how banks serve middle-market and corporate clients, focusing on issues such as interest-rate volatility, regulatory pressure, and intensifying competition for deposits and credit relationships. This section focuses on balance-sheet strategy, commercial lending, treasury and cash management, risk governance, and the technologies reshaping relationship banking.
Learn how institutions are recalibrating growth expectations, managing credit exposure, and using payments and treasury capabilities to deepen client relationships while preserving profitability.
Commercial banking is under structural pressure from higher funding costs, uneven loan demand, and increased supervisory scrutiny. Banks are being forced to prioritize relationship depth, disciplined credit selection, and non-interest income generation rather than balance-sheet expansion alone.
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The Champaign, Illinois-based company said it would pay $41.6 million to acquire Merchants and Manufacturers Bank Corp., which has five branches in the Greater Chicago area.
November 27
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Purchases by banks, airlines, industrial heavyweights and other businesses fell for the first time last year, according to Bloomberg Green's analysis of data in three public registries covering more than 260,000 transactions since 2010. Yet corporate buyers increased purchases of offsets derived from a particularly controversial source — wind, hydro and solar projects.
November 27
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Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group's Chief Executive Officer Jun Ohta, who pursued an aggressive expansion abroad during his four years at the helm of Japan's second-largest bank, has died. He was 65.
November 27
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Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. has been a prolific acquirer, purchasing the insurance brokerages from multiple banks over the last year. Its management has indicated it has another $3.5 billion that it can use for more deals.
November 26
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Wells Fargo makes a $1.5 million investment in Black entrepreneurship; America Express promotes small businesses through augmented reality; shareholders approve the Banc of California-PacWest merger; and more in the weekly banking news roundup.
November 22
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Dream Chasers upped its bid for Carver, one of the nation's largest and highest-profile Black banks, by a quarter, to $3.25 per share, dismissing the growth strategy interim CEO Craig MacKay outlined in a recent shareholder letter.
November 22
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Mago, who was fourth on American Banker's Most Powerful Women to Watch list this year, succeeds Brian Fishel, who is retiring.
November 21
