Stung by large losses on its investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Midwest Banc Holdings Inc. of Melrose Park, Ill., announced Tuesday that it intends to raise up to $125 million through a preferred stock offering.

Trident Bank in Atlanta would not be the first start-up bank to target doctors and other health-care professionals, but when it opens its doors early next year it could be the only one offering a payments tool that would give them easy access to patients' insurance data.

John M. O'Meara, the chairman and chief executive officer of First Midwest Bancorp Inc. in Itasca, Ill., died Saturday at the age of 62 after a long illness.

Pacific Mercantile Bancorp in Costa Mesa, Calif., is searching for a new chief credit officer for its banking unit.

When Stewart Greenlee joined CenterBank of Milford, Ohio, as its chief executive 18 months ago, he set an ambitious goal: Transform the tiny bank into a Cincinnati-area powerhouse with $1 billion of assets.

From Mark L. Johnston's point of view, the merger agreement that his mutual savings bank in Augusta, Maine, announced this week is not much different from any other one.

To the Editor:

ROCK HILL, S.C. – Family Trust FCU is holding a ”Sports Jersey Day” to promote the opening of its new Clover branch, the $220 million credit union’s seventh service center.

REIDSVILLE, N.C. – Reidsville High School yesterday opened the state's first student-run credit union, a branch of American Partners FCU.

SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio FCU has placed two ATMs at the Port of San Antonio to provide evacuees from Hurricane Ike access to funds.

A Louisiana holding company that owns three bankers' banks is buying a fourth, in Arkansas, in what would be the first merger of bankers' banks.

Yadkin Valley Financial Corp. of Elkin, N.C., would enter North Carolina's largest market and increase its assets by about 40% with the deal it announced Wednesday for American Community Bancshares Inc. of Charlotte, but its investors do not seem impressed.

Newnan Coweta Bancshares Inc. signed a written agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and Georgia state regulators requiring it to submit a conflict of interest policy, improve board oversight and underwriting standards, and maintain its capital position, the Fed said Wednesday.

NEW ENGLAND

Kansas Bankers Surety Co., an insurance firm in Topeka, said it will no longer offer banks a tool designed to protect deposits of more than $100,000.

Integrity Bank was the first Georgia bank to fail this year, and industry watchers say it will not be the last.

Shares of Signature Bank soared Tuesday after the New York commercial bank announced that it had expanded its stock offering by roughly 34%, to 4.7 million shares.

EL PASO, Texas – GECU, formerly Government Employees CU, is completing construction of an 88,000-square-foot operations center that will consolidate the $1.4 billion credit union’s operations and executive staff.

Three days before the government stepped in to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a small Tennessee thrift said it was forced to sell itself because its investment in the government-sponsored enterprises had soured and depleted its capital.