The paper quotes First Niagara CEO John Koelmel as saying it will eventually have to do a capital raise to support the larger balance sheet. Antitrust issues may also arise, FT says.

HSBC, which has been scaling back its U.S. operations, struck a deal to sell 195 retail banking branches to First Niagara Financial for $1 billion in cash, the companies said Sunday.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – San Mateo CU last week said it will open a new branch in low income East Palo Alto this fall in the space formerly occupied by California Bank & Trust.

Wall Street banks including Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank AG slammed Standard & Poor's decision to suspend ratings on commercial mortgage bonds after finding a flaw in the review process.

Battered by loan troubles, Princeton National Bancorp Inc. Illinois announced after markets closed Friday that it lost $2.9 million, or 88 cents per share, in the quarter that ended June 30.

Fannie Mae on Friday suspended Republic Mortgage Insurance Co. as an approved MI to the GSE and took the added step of suspending a subsidiary that RMIC planned to write all new business through come September 1.

Integra Bank in Evansville, Ind., was closed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, after fighting to survive for nearly two years.

After ripping off 11 straight quarters of losses, the Blairsville, Ga., company reported a second-period profit last week. That turned heads.

BankAtlantic Bancorp Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is heading west to try to drum up interest in its stock.

West Coast Bancorp in Lake Oswego, Ore., reported a profit of $4.6 million in the second quarter, a vast improvement over the same period last year, but a bit of a letdown when compared with this year's first quarter.

Growth rates have approached levels observed during the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.

The average price of existing homes in the Houston area reached a record $228,650 in June, according to the local real estate group, as the number of transactions increased for the first time since January.

The U.S. homeownership rate fell by less than half-a-point in the second quarter to 65.9% as foreclosures accelerated and consumers put off buying homes because of fears about prices and the economy.

The nation's mortgage insurance firms wrote $4.8 billion of primary new business in June, the sector's best month of the year, excluding January, according to new figures compiled by an industry trade group.

PHH Corp., the nation's fifth largest residential funder, lost $41 million in the second quarter as the fair value of its mortgage servicing rights declined by $117 million during the period.

Bank of America over the past 10 days tried – and failed – to sell roughly $50 billion of 'legacy' mortgage servicing rights, according to servicing advisors familiar with the auction.

SCBT Financial Corp. in Columbia, S.C., which bought a failed bank and raised capital in February, on Friday posted its best quarterly results in two years.

In its second full quarter as a 100% stock-owned company, Capitol Federal Financial Inc. in Topeka reported earnings of $17.3 million, an increase of 11% over the same period in 2010.

A minimum credit score would not cap or regulate risk, or even measure it consistently. Instead it would ensure that the risk floor for QRMs would actually fluctuate.

The niche business inherited from Bear Stearns may have posed an image problem for a bank already grappling with mortgage PR headaches.