Add Fitch Ratings to the growing chorus of banking industry voices expressing concern about the expiration of a bailout-era deposit protection program and its potential impact on small banks.

Lynn Harton has held key titles at South Financial, Regions Financial and BB&T. As South Financial's CEO, he helped orchestrate the South Carolina company's sale to TD Bank.

Wintrust Financial (WTFC) has agreed to buy HPK Financial, the parent of Hyde Park Bank and Trust.

Cullen/Frost Bankers will close four branches in the Rio Grande Valley this fall. The company gained the branches after it bought the parent company of the $401 million-asset Alamo Bank of Texas in 2006.

FirstMerit's deal for Citizens Republic in Michigan sent a message that acquisition prospects in Chicago are weaker than first thought — and deal forecasters back to the drawing board.

Bankers' banks are evolving into trusted advisors to small banks just a few years after a pair of high-profile failures pared their ranks and damaged the group's credibility.

D.A. Davidson, a Portland, Ore., investment bank has recruited two bank M&A advisors in Chicago, Stephen Nelson and Eugene Katz, from rival Hovde Financial.

Two former Sterling Financial (STSA) mortgage loan officers have sued the company on claims that they are owed unpaid overtime.

RevSpring, formed by the merger of DANTOM Systems, PSC Info Group and Data Image, has acquired BestBill, a Phoenix-based billing and payment technology provider.

Two former loan officers at Sterling Financial in Lancaster, Pa., have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their role in a multi-year fraud scheme that led to massive losses at Sterling.

Alliance Data Systems (ADS) has agreed to buy credit card accounts from Talbots and to take over the retailer's private-label credit card program.

A breakdown of M&A announcements in the financial services industry for the week ended September 15.

Creating New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp will mean one fewer thrift but allows management the chance to preserve a type of institution that is threatened with extinction.

BNC Bancorp in High Point, N.C., has completed its acquisition of KeySource Financial nearly 10 months after announcing the deal.

Three Ohio credit unions have completed a rare three-institution merger to form Pathways Financial Credit Union.

Flickers of life in the housing market are prompting homebuilders to seek revolving lines of credit from banks for the first time in several years. They are getting them, and money from the debt and equity markets, too.

Citigroup's $4.7 billion pretax writedown of its Morgan Stanley Smith Barney stake probably won't reduce a profit-sharing plan's award for CEO Vikram Pandit that could total $24 million.

Louisiana plans to standardize its collection policies across agencies and centralize other efforts, either through one agency or with a private company.

The Missouri Division of Finance closed the $282.3 million-asset Truman Bank in St. Louis on Friday. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. entered into an agreement with Simmons First National Bank in Pine Bluff, Ark., to buy the bank's assets and assume its $245.7 million in deposits.

Level One Bancorp in Farmington Hills, Mich., is applying its experience working on failed banks to buy and integrate one that is merely struggling. Patrick Fehring, the company's CEO, says that experience integrating failed banks has prepared Level One to buy the struggling Oxford Bank.