The OCC's approval clears First Niagara to close its deal for 195 branches in New York and Connecticut by May 18, CEO John Koelmel says.

Mortgage companies added 3,000 full-time employees to their payrolls in February, according to Friday's jobs report.

Participants in the Small Business Lending Fund increased small business lending by $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter, a 37% increase from the previous quarter, the Treasury Department said Monday.

Jefferson’s deal for Carrollton Bancorp is part of the PE-backed company’s plan to expand to $1 billion of assets, which CEO Cashen says is a must in today’s world.

Small mortgage banking companies benefited from a 32% jump in loan production from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, but profitability per loan was crimped by a slight drop in pricing in the secondary mortgage market, according to a new report by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Two years after the federal government largely took over the student loan market, the remaining banks in the industry are preparing for another shakeup.

Toronto Dominion Bank wants to become the third-largest retail bank in NYC, while U.S. competitors are pulling back.

Ally Financial Inc., the government-owned auto lender, is making a $134 million dividend payment to the Treasury Department.

The spread between consumer rates and secondary market rates – a proxy for the profitability of originations – spiked to new highs in the first quarter.

The SEC says Anthony Nocella, Franklin Bank Corp.'s former CEO, and J. Russell McCann, its former CFO, fraudulently concealed the deterioration of the bank's loan portfolio and inflated its earnings before the company declared bankruptcy in 2008.

The Lansing, Mich., company has turned its inventory of community banks into a garage sale to bring in capital to support its struggling banks. With fewer banks left to sell, industry observers say Capitol has few options to keep capital levels above regulatory minimums for failure.

Editor's Note, July 25, 2012: This and other BankThink opinion columns written by Joel Sucher bearing this note, published between October 2011 and June 2012, mentioned the law firm of Stephen J. Baum, Litton Loan Servicing, or both. The columns should have disclosed that Baum's firm, working on behalf of Litton, had attempted to foreclose on the writer's property in 2009. American Banker's editors were unaware of this history at the time the columns were published.

DNB First in Downington, Pa., is acquiring a branch in nearby Boothwyn from Capital Bank of Rockville. Md.

Ailing Orrstown Bank in Shippensburg, Pa., has named a former chief lobbyist at the American Bankers Association to its board of directors.

Community banks will be around a long time if they focus on small business borrowers, pursue customers alienated by bigger banks and don’t get greedy, panelists on an American Banker roundtable said.

HARRISBURG, Penn. — A federal court here dismissed a suit last week alleging Pennsylvania State Employees CU violated provisions of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act after the credit union produced evidence suggesting that someone had removed the legally required notice affixed to the ATM disclosing the fees to be charged to non-member users of the cash machine.

Saxon Mortgage, a servicing firm owned by Morgan Stanley (MS), is shuttering two of its Texas processing facilities and laying off roughly 680 of its workers.

"Is my bank worth that much?" That is the urgent question potential sellers are asking in the Lone Star State, after two pricey deals there — for Encore Bancshares and American State Financial — the past two months.

TD is investing in a massive brick-and-mortar expansion even as its U.S. competitors increasingly question the future of the traditional storefront.

Peapack-Gladstone Financial (PGC) of Bedminster, N.J., has paid $110,000 to repurchase the warrant it issued to the Treasury Department as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.