The pace of bank mergers and acquisitions has slowed considerably as the credit crisis has worsened, but even when deals are struck there is no guarantee they will get done.

Shares of Columbia Bancorp of The Dalles, Ore., fell nearly 12% Tuesday after the company said it would report first-quarter earnings significantly lower than expected, citing an increase in problem residential construction loans and continued margin compression.

United Bank of Philadelphia must strengthen its management, board oversight, and loan policies under a cease-and-desist order that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disclosed Tuesday.

Peoples Community Bank in West Chester, Ohio, said it must curtail lending under one of two recently issued cease-and-desist orders from the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Federal regulators are eyeing Texas' new, one-of-a-kind system for reducing check fraud to see if institutions with national charters must comply.

Old National Bancorp in Evansville, Ind., announced Monday that it expects to take a $21 million loan-loss provision for the first quarter that it is attributing largely to deteriorating credit quality on loans in the Indianapolis region made by a single lender who is now the subject of an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Willow Financial Bancorp Inc. in Wayne, Pa., said Monday that it must restate earnings for its previous two fiscal years.

CIB Marine Bancshares Inc. in Pewaukee, Wis., announced an agreement to sell the branches, deposits, and a portion of the loans of one of its subsidiary banks, the $125 million-asset Citrus Bank in Vero Beach, Fla., to 1st United Bancorp Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla.

Credit unions' opposition to a Treasury Department proposal to eliminate the National Credit Union Administration goes beyond their reluctance to share a regulator with banks and thrifts, their bitter rivals.

Cascade Financial Corp.'s stock price fell 4% Friday, to $11.48 a share at the close of exchange trading after the Everett, Wash., company warned that its reported first-quarter earnings would be less than expected because of bad residential construction loans.

BCSB Bankcorp Inc.'s second attempt to go fully public is off to a slow start.

Green Bank, a $266 million-asset, environmentally focused bank in Houston, has hired Geoffrey D. Greenwade as its president and chief executive officer.

First Place Financial Corp. in Warren, Ohio, plans to acquire OC Financial Inc. in Dublin for $7.2 million in stock.

So much for the niceties.

View the top 150 credit unions by assets and deposits.

Few bank or thrift companies have been hit as hard by the real estate meltdown in California's Inland Empire region as PFF Bancorp Inc. in Rancho Cucamonga.

A day after reporting its fifth consecutive annual loss, CIB Marine Bancshares Inc. in Pewaukee, Wis., revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday that it has been trying to sell itself since November.

MIDWEST

Despite the unrelenting bad news about collapsing real estate values in many markets in the Southeast, community banks can still point to a few cities and regions where real estate lending remains strong.