Is it inevitable? Will community banks as we know them cease to exist over the next 10 years, with large, regional and multi-state banks along with credit unions left to fill the gap?

Senate Democrats Tuesday failed in an attempt to scale back a bill meant to ease the path for small banks to raise new capital.

Daryl Byrd is reluctant to discuss specific markets, though he says in an interview Tuesday that his company is open to deals in several states as it looks to grow more outside its home turf in Louisiana.

Fulton Financial Corp. has promoted an insider to replace R. Scott Smith Jr., who announced plans to retire from the Lancaster, Pa., company at the end of this year.

The Federal Reserve Board has terminated a written agreement with Mid America Bank and Trust Co. in Dixon, Mo.

A group including $78 billion-asset M&T and $9 billion-asset Sterling Financial ratcheted up their servicing portfolios by a fifth or more in 2011. Nonbanks are scooping up problem loan servicing, but banks still have a distinct funding advantage.

Bank of Montreal expects to save $300 million a year from the acquisition of Marshall & Ilsley, $50 million more than initially forecast, CEO William Downe says.

A Virginia investor who has co-founded and sold three community banks in the past decade may buy up to a 45% share in First Capital Bancorp Inc. in Glen Allen, Va.

Green Dot CEO Steven Streit discusses the growing consumer acceptance of reloadable prepaid debit cards.

Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.'s former finance chief admitted to helping his boss, Lee Farkas, commit what prosecutors say was one of the largest bank frauds in U.S. history.

The current U.S. tax code represents decades of political manipulation rather than any grand design, and can certainly be improved upon, but only a tax neutral pro-growth tax reform can prevent the deficit from spiraling out of control. Hence tax reform should favor saving over consumption and productive work over leisure, but otherwise be neutral, allowing capital and labor to flow to their most productive use.

Citigroup Inc. has reached a long-term agreement to provide credit services for the retailer coalition BrandSource.

Wells Fargo is already contacting borrowers who might be eligible for a principal reduction as required under the $25 billion robo-signing settlement with state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Dan Magder, a director of acquisitions for Lone Star Funds, has quit the investment firm to focus on what he calls an "REO-to-rental investment opportunity."

The correspondent lending arm of Wells Fargo this week began publishing a list of third-party originators that it will no longer buy loans from in the secondary market — as a way to address what it calls "risks" in loan origination.

The New York Investment firm Prospect Capital Corp. has agreed to acquire a majority stake in specialty-finance company, First Tower Corp., for roughly $266 million.

Bridge Capital Holdings Inc. in San Jose is opening a third loan office on the East Coast to lend to emerging technology companies.

Mortgage bondholders are crying foul — and lining up their lawyers — over losses they would incur if servicers write down investors' holdings.

Continuing in its quest to reinvent itself as a specialty-finance lender, TCF Financial Corp. of Wayzata, Minn., has launched a new division that will specialize in asset-based and cash-flow lending to smaller middle-market companies across the U.S.

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