Visa and other financial companies are taking steps to prevent possible disruptions from Hurricane Irene.

The Federal Reserve Board said Friday it will hold three public hearings on Capital One Financial Corp.'s proposed $9 billion purchase of online bank ING Direct USA.

The $3.4 billion-asset company announced last week that it paid $600,000 for a ham — the grand champion ham at the 48th Kentucky Country Ham Auction, an annual charity event.

With the Eastern Seaboard bracing Friday for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, the FDIC told banks to look in the not-too-distant past for how to deal with damaging storms.

Technology company Tio Networks Corp. has developed software for "reverse ATMs" that collect money from lower-income customers instead of dispensing it.

PVF Capital Corp. in Solon, Ohio, reported a loss of $2.6 million for its fiscal fourth quarter, a slight improvement from a year earlier.

Under orders from its regulators to boost a key capital ratio, Pacific Mercantile Bancorp in Costa Mesa, Calif., announced that it has already raised $11.2 million of fresh capital and has a deal in place to raise $27.3 million more.

First BanCorp in San Juan, Puerto Rico, has $525 million of capital committed. Now it needs its shareholders to show up and vote for a key part of its recapitalization plan.

Texas Capital Bancshares Inc. in Dallas has lost the first round in a legal battle over a loan it made to an Oklahoma automobile dealer that soured.

Regulators have hit Woodbury Banking Co. with a consent order for weaknesses in the company's asset quality, capital, earnings and management.

A new Federal Reserve Board report refutes the claim by some that the Community Reinvestment Act and affordable housing goals of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the mortgage crisis.

Old National Bancorp in Evansville, Ind., announced Friday that it is shuttering nine of the 52 branches it inherited when it took over the failed Integra Bank and will move the accounts to nearby offices.

Nearly two years after HUD revamped mortgage disclosure rules, many lenders rely on manual processes — if any — and end up having to pay the difference between underestimated and actual closing costs.

Opportunistic community banks in south Florida have seen a dramatic increase in new customers because of a contraction of banks caused by failures and mergers.

In the Washington Post last week, housing columnist Kenneth Harney took an interesting look at mortgage loans guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Two more community banks have exited the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program with loans they received from another government fund designed to encourage small-business lending.

Even though consumers increasingly trust nonbanks such as Google and Facebook with their personal information, they trust credit card providers more.

A small Silicon Valley bank that lends primarily to technology startups has opened a lending office in incubator space in Boston.

A roughly 7 basis point increase in 30-year mortgage rates and gains in bond yields from recent record lows could dampen refinancing applications a bit unless they motivate a significant group of fence-sitting borrowers to act.

The Mortgage Bankers Association is being inundated by member complaints about the Federal Housing Administration's policy decision to extend the forbearance period for unemployed homeowners to 12 months.