Regulators will eventually release banks from the penalty box of formal enforcement actions. For now, banks can expect informal agreements to serve as a provisional step to freedom.

In a new paper, Karen Shaw Petrou, a leading financial services analyst, outlines flaws with new capital and liquidity requirements, and offers policymakers a way to simplify the process.

Hampton Roads Bankshares Inc. in Norfolk, Va., has named a special assets executive, Denny P. Cobb, chief credit officer for one of its banking units.

The Treasury Department said Friday it netted $12.21 million from the sale of warrants to buy stock in 17 financial firms, including banks such as Maryland-based Eagle Bancorp Inc. and Indiana-based Horizon Bancorp.

The federal government could avoid many unnecessary bank failures by making targeted preferred equity investments in community banks with a Camels 3 rating.

Shareholders of Susquehanna Bancshares Inc. in Lititz, Pa., and Tower Bancorp Inc. in Harrisburg, Pa., have approved the companies' proposed merger.

Most of the transactions in November have involved the sale of small, closely held banks to much bigger players. The buyers want to spend excess cash and expand on the cheap.

The Federal Reserve has banned a former executive of Security Bank in Tulsa, Okla., from the banking industry.

Stew Leonard Jr., the owner of an eponymous grocery store chain in New York, echoed the groans from today's bank directors.

Some family owned banks have had difficulty transitioning from one generation to the next, and the current economic downturn has made it trickier than ever to transfer control.

Stew Leonard shares his thoughts on customer service, motivating front-line employees, and why he'll never serve on a bank board again.

Home BancShares Inc. in Conway, Ark., has agreed to buy 17 branches in a purchase-and-assumption agreement with Park National Corp. in Newark, Ohio.

No one would blame activist investor Richard Lashley if he's muttering, "I told you so." His firm, PL Capital, spent two years before the financial crisis fighting to get on the board at Bancorp Rhode Island and force a sale, to no avail. Now the company is working to complete its sale to Brookline Bancorp.

The U.K. government said it will sell Northern Rock to Virgin Money for £747 million ($1.2 billion) cash, marking a major loss on its investment in the mortgage lender that became a symbol of the financial crisis.

The Treasury and the banking industry would like nothing better than to see more credit unions convert to taxpaying banks. This is hardly going to happen if CUs perceive the OCC as an inhospitable regulator of their mutual form.

NBT Bancorp Inc. in Norwich, N.Y., said late Wednesday that it will acquire Hampshire First Bank in Manchester, N.H.

Regulators are writing massive, complex rules that will be impossible to enforce. Editor at Large Barbara A. Rehm offers an alternative.

U.S. banks may get to spend some excess cash on loans or lines of business that European banks will seek to dump. Still, a cloud hangs over the outlook for bank M&A next year.

Bank of the West in San Francisco is entering the Chicago area by opening a commercial banking office.

Anemic household expenditures this year heightened anxiety that the economy would stall out, but growth in spending on plastic has remained healthy. An increased appetite for big-ticket items among households that are surviving the malaise probably explains much of the phenomenon.