The proposed $35 billion merger between Capital One and Discover cleared a major regulatory hurdle as the Justice Department told financial regulators in a confidential memo that it didn't have sufficient evidence to block the transaction.

Equity Bancshares said it would pay nearly $87 million in cash and stock to acquire NBC Corp. of Oklahoma. If it closes, the deal will be Equity's 13th bank acquisition since 2015.

The first year of Otting's tenure as the New York lender's CEO brought substantial change, but the job isn't done. His goal: to build a powerhouse, profitable regional bank.

Regulators should approve the deal because post-merger, the servicing market remains fragmented and the mortgage origination business is even more dispersed.

Time and again, seemingly successful bank mergers have been rocked by revelations of poor anti-money-laundering compliance. Assessing the AML risk of a potential merger partner is extremely tricky.

The proposed sale of Territorial Bancorp faced competing offers that delayed its closing by several months. But Hope ultimately won shareholder and regulatory approvals.

Lawmakers have a short window of time in which they can use the Congressional Review Act to nullify the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's misguided rule striking medical debt from credit reports.

"I can't just go fishing in the ocean," said Grasshopper Bank CEO Michael Butler, referring to his bank's ability to gather deposits. "JPMorgan Chase is out there with a yacht, and I'm driving a small speedboat."

The deal was highly vetted with regulators following the publicly traded company's failure to obtain approval in a past agreement, an executive said.

The $381 million deal for Alabama-based Southern States Bancshares would give FB entree to the sprawling Atlanta market. CEO Christopher Holmes said the bank would likely focus on nearby suburban communities initially.

The deal, expected to close by the end of 2025, will place Mr. Cooper CEO Jay Bray as president and CEO of Rocket Mortgage.

The Mississippi lender said regulators have signed off sooner than expected on its $103.6 million acquisition of First Chatham Bank. The bank's CEO and deal advisers said the speedy approval bodes well for future M&A.

Former Chicago City Council member Patrick Daley Thompson may have made "misleading" statements about more than $200,000 in loans, the high court ruled — but they weren't "false."

BMO names Tony Sciarrino head of its U.S. commercial bank; Renasant receives regulatory approvals to complete its pending acquisition of The First Bancshares; Arkansas classifies earned wage access as a financial product; and more in this week's banking news roundup.

BankFirst Capital Corp. is seeking to bolster its presence in southern Mississippi with a deal to acquire Magnolia State.

Following a media report that Department of Justice staffers have expressed concern about how Capital One's purchase of Discover would affect competition in the subprime credit market, analysts said the portfolio would be tough to sell. But they remain optimistic that the deal will get over the finish line.

The small-business lender bought a Chicago community bank in what some experts say will be the first of many such deals.

The Independent Community Bankers of America wants Congress to eliminate tax exemptions for credit unions with more than $1 billion of assets, scaling back an earlier request that would have targeted the entire credit union sector.

Google Cloud trails Amazon and Microsoft in market share and is looking to catch up by trying to be one of multiple providers that companies use.

The suburban Atlanta banks, both of which specialize in lending to Korean-American businesses, plan to merge in a $206 million cash-and-stock deal.