Commercial lending

The U.S. unit of Toronto-Dominion Bank merged its corporate and specialty team with its commercial banking group, putting the fast-growing operations under the same leadership.

The Detroit company, which recently agreed to be sold to Huntington Bancshares, gained $1 billion in loans and roughly 60 employees.

For now, banks say they have no plans to curtail lending to oil and gas firms, but recent moves by the new administration — including a halt in drilling on federal land and an effort to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline — could cause them to re-evaluate their long-term commitment to the fossil fuel industry.

A rule change that allows farms with just one employee tap the Paycheck Protection Program means more pandemic relief funds are flowing into such states as Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming and North Dakota.

The Atlanta company joins a small list of banks that have sold loans to companies struggling with the coronavirus pandemic.

The rule, finalized in the waning days of the Trump administration and scheduled to take effect in April, would have punished banks for denying services to certain firms without documented reasons for doing so.

The upstate New York company unloaded three loans, joining a short list of lenders that have purged problematic credits during the pandemic.

The Cleveland company will launch the service in March to broaden relationships its Laurel Road student loan refinancing unit has built with health care professionals.

The Dallas bank says reserves could return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021— a year earlier than analysts were predicting — if vaccines prove effective at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

Businesses owned by minorities and women got a head start this week in a new round of $284 billion funding, and early anecdotal evidence suggests stronger demand coming from these businesses.