Prompted by recent acquisitions in Texas and encouraged by rebounding crop values, Hibernia Corp. in New Orleans is ramping up its agricultural lending.

Six months after it began offering late-night hours at a Miami branch, BankAtlantic Bancorp of Fort Lauderdale has extended the service to four more branches.

Centrue Financial Corp. in Kankakee, Ill., closed 2004 with the announcement that it was buying a small bank in southern Illinois.

After failing to gain the necessary two-thirds vote from its members, a $1 billion-asset Grand Rapids credit union will not convert to a mutual savings bank.

City Holding Co. of Charleston, W.Va., has its first deal in more than five years, and its chief executive says it may not be done buying.

The president of a San Diego broker-dealer that opened last week said he believes he can generate up to $1.5 billion of assets under management this year by selling insurance and investment services through community banks.

As the chief executive of a banking company with just three branches and $136 million of assets, Mortimer J. O'Shea has to do a lot of things that executives of bigger ones never trouble themselves with.

A spate of banking laws that took effect New Year's Day include an Indiana predatory-lending law that exempts banks and could lead to similar statutes elsewhere.

Habersham Bancorp in Cornelia, Ga., announced a nonbonding agreement to buy a two-branch bank in nearby Toccoa.

MIDWEST

Already struggling with credit-quality problems, Financial Institutions Inc. of Warsaw, N.Y., says it has uncovered weaknesses in its internal controls for financial reporting at two of its four bank units.

Once determined to maintain its status as a multibank holding company with subsidiaries throughout Tennessee, Civitas Bankgroup Inc. in Franklin is changing course and selling its banks in smaller markets.

In his more than six years on the board of the Farm Credit System's regulator, including four as its chairman, Michael M. Reyna says he was too busy regulating to advocate for wholesale changes to the system.

Central Bancshares Inc. of Lexington, Ky., has agreed to buy First Bank Inc. of Louisville for $13.5 million.

"My wife has been in the hospital, and we have to postpone our trip to my son's wedding in San Francisco by one day. How much will it cost?"

Baltimore's reemergence as a desirable place to live has spawned a new line of business for the $489 million-asset K Bank of Owings Mills, Md.: purchase-and-rehabilitation lending for individual investors.

Allied Capital Corp. said Monday the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia has asked the Washington company for information on its activities and those of its Business Loan Express LLC "in connection with a criminal investigation."

Brooklyn Federal Bancorp Inc., a 118-year-old mutual thrift with two branches in Brooklyn, N.Y., and one on Long Island, plans to raise $25 million to $39 million by selling a 30% stake to investors.

Northwest Bancorp Inc. of Warren, Pa., announced Monday that it will fold its small Jamestown Savings Bank in upstate New York into its larger thrift, Northwest Savings Bank of Warren.