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The $186 million-asset Wooster company, which warned this spring that it might fail, announced Monday that it has agreed to sell a majority stake to Excel Financial LLC of St. Clairsville, Ohio, for $15 million.

If you don't like the rules, change them. That's what one blank-check company did when a looming deadline threatened its plans to buy a Nevada bank.

Improved technology and growing interest in cost cutting have prompted some financial companies to install videoconferencing systems to serve people in the branch, replacing tellers in some cases or providing immediate access to specialists who might be working at another location.

Two failures in Florida, including the collapse of Naples-based Orion Bank, and another in California late Friday brought the year's total to 123.

In a move that should help stressed banks avoid public relations fiascoes, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has toned down the harsh wording of orders it issues to such institutions.

Sun National Bank's wealth management business is off to a slow start thanks to the recession, but executives at the Vineland, N.J., bank say they remain committed to the business.

Harrington West Financial Group Inc. is courting potential investors as the next step in recapitalizing itself, Craig J. Cerny, its chairman and chief executive officer, said in an interview Thursday.

Another round of writedowns on pooled trust-preferred securities has left Rainier Pacific Financial Group Inc. and its bank unit significantly undercapitalized.

Selling its Kansas branches helped Harrington West Financial Group Inc. hit a capital deadline this month. But the Solvang, Calif., company is far from mended.

The significantly undercapitalized Amcore Financial Inc. is warning that its bank might fail if it cannot come up with an acceptable capital plan within a few weeks.

Because of accounting errors, VIST Financial Corp. in Wyomissing, Pa., is revising its results for the past four quarters.

Its investments in bank stocks prompted StellarOne Corp. in Charlottesville, Va., to widen its third-quarter loss by 16%, to $9.4 million, or 41 cents a share.

Horizon Financial Corp. in Bellingham, Wash., has warned that it may fail because the company and its bank unit are critically undercapitalized.

Nonperforming assets rose dramatically at Tamalpais Bancorp in San Rafael, Calif., forcing it to swing to a loss of $5M in the third quarter, from a profit of $1.5 million a year earlier.

Green Bankshares said "no thanks" to a major shareholder's unsolicited offer to inject up to $40 million of fresh capital into the company so it can buy failed banks.

East West Bancorp's takeover of the failed United Commercial Bank not only catapulted the struggling firm to new prominence, but it also sets up a showdown in California between the two biggest Chinese-American lenders.

Fannie Mae has given more than three dozen credit unions until next week to accept an offer of pennies on the dollar for about $125 million of their mortgages that the defunct U.S. Mortgage fraudulently sold to Fannie.

The seizure of its $13 billion-asset United Commercial Bank on Friday suggests that even institutions the Treasury Department had the most confidence in a year ago are not all going to be winners in this down cycle — or, for that matter, survivors.

Officials announced the elaborate closing of San Francisco-based United Commercial Bank Friday night in a deal involving both U.S. and Chinese regulators and a buyer poised to assume the bank's operations immediately.

In an interview during the ABA's annual meeting in Chicago late last month, Johnson said that after a decade's worth of job losses in Michigan, his intent as chairman is to advocate for the kind of political change that will help jump-start the economy.