Tompkins Financial in Ithaca, N.Y., is planning to raise $30 million in a secondary stock offering and may use the proceeds to redeem securities issued to VIST Financial through the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

In an effort to tie its consumer businesses closer together, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) promoted Matthew Biben to the new position of general counsel of all of its consumer businesses. Biben was hired last year as general counsel for the mortgage business.

The House on Tuesday gave final approval to a bill that will allow some small banks to raise additional capital without registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Consumers will be able to discharge student loans in bankruptcy if Sen. Richard Durbin gets his way. Banks are vehemently opposing the move.

A clubby corner of the mortgage market has sprung back to life thanks to the historic settlement between banks and governments over foreclosure practices.

Deputy CFPB Director Raj Date told an industry group Tuesday that the bureau was carefully weighing the effect that a new ability-to-repay standard will have on the mortgage market.

The Federal Reserve Board has terminated a written agreement with the former Cadence Financial about a year after the Starkville, Miss., company was acquired.

It's time for our nation's leaders to get serious about job creation. Our economy is beginning to inch its way forward toward recovery, but the only way forward to real prosperity for all is through small businesses.

AmericanWest Bank in Spokane, Wash., is deepening its presence in California with plans to acquire Security Business Bank of San Diego.

Alliance Data Systems (ADS) has renewed a long-term agreement to manage the private-label credit card program for luxury goods retailer Little Switzerland, according to an announcement Tuesday.

If TAG is allowed to expire at yearend, it could spur community banks looking for extra liquidity to turn back to FHLB advances, which are at their lowest point in a decade.

Provident New York Bancorp (PBNY) in Montebello has added its fifth commercial banking team in the New York City market since January.

CenterState Banks (CSFL) in Davenport, Fla.., is looking to slim down after spending much of the last three years bulking up through acquisitions.

Meta Financial Group (CASH) of Storm Lake, Iowa, has agreed to pay $2.1 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with investors related its former high-interest, small-balance loan program, iAdvance.

Barry Sloane of Newtek Business Services says his small-merchant clients are reaping little benefit from the cap on debit interchange fees.

HSBC's residential lending and servicing business continues to be under what the bank calls a "strategic review," leaving its mortgage workers in limbo.

The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association has raised the possibility of creating a hybrid reverse mortgage loan with members of the White House staff, Peter Bell, its president and CEO told attendees at the group's eastern regional meeting in New York.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has ordered AmericaHomeKey, Inc., to immediately stop making FHA-insured mortgages and fined the Dallas-based lender $268,000.

Capital Bank Financial, a Miami company formed two years ago to buy distressed banks in the Southeast, has struck a deal to acquire Southern Community Financial (SCMF) in Winston-Salem, N.C., for $48.4 million.

No one can ever accuse Steve Huston of being a heartless banker. Huston, the owner of Bankwest Financial in Rockford, Minn., resuscitated Dr. Frank Anderson during a pickup basketball game in January, a local Fox News affiliate reported last week.