New York

Hovde Acquisitions, a Washington private equity firm, used a shelf charter to pick up the $282 million-asset Bay National Bank in Baltimore, which was closed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and was one of four failures on Friday.

Hovde Acquisitions, a Washington private equity firm, used a shelf charter to pick up the $282 million-asset Bay National Bank in Baltimore, which was closed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and was one of four failures on Friday.

Lured by the chance to raise capital and worried about the future of the Office of Thrift Supervision, a wave of mutual holding companies have received approval to convert to full stock companies.

Oneida Financial Corp. of New York said it has received conditional regulatory approval to commence its second-step conversion from a mutual to a stock company.

First Niagara Financial Corp. said Monday that its first-quarter earnings rose 51.6%, to $32.6 million.

After selling a large chunk of its nonperforming assets in the fourth quarter, State Bancorp Inc. in Jericho, N.Y., returned to profitability in the first quarter.

The sale of Harleysville National Corp. of Pennsylvania to First Niagara Financial Group of Buffalo closed Friday, though before the closing Harleysville National sold a wealth management division.

Many smaller banks say they plan to keep offering such services because demand is strong and overdraft fee income is essential.

Arrow Financial Corp. in Glens Falls, N.Y., said it has a deal to buy the area insurance firm Loomis & LaPann Inc. for an undisclosed price.

A bill that would give New York credit unions access to tens of millions of dollars in municipal deposits cleared the New York State Senate last week as part of a budget resolution, giving it momentum for a vote in the state Assembly.

Ficalora's outlook on the Westbury company's prospects is bullish, to say the least. He said the next three years could be the most promising ever for doing what NYCB does best — buying other banks and using their deposits to fund its main business of lending money to the owners of rent-controlled apartments in New York.

Sterling Bancorp in New York has priced its public offering and increased the number of shares the company will offer.

Capitol Bancorp Ltd. said Monday that it has a stock redemption agreement with USNY Bank to sell its 51% interest in the $64 million-asset bank.

WASHINGTON — The government closed state-chartered banks in New York, Florida and Louisiana late Friday to bring the year's failure tally to 30.

Regulators decided on a rare Thursday seizure because a Friday evening closure would have conflicted with the Jewish Sabbath.

The U.S. earned $11.15 million in its latest auction of warrants obtained from institutions that were once part of its $700 billion financial company rescue program.

WASHINGTON — State regulators shut $209.7 million-asset LibertyPointe Bank of New York, a rare move for a Thursday evening that usually indicates a bank's condition was deteriorating rapidly.

The closing of the sale of Harleysville National Corp. to First Niagara Financial Group of Buffalo has been pushed back.

Though the $16.4 billion-asset company, led by the real estate developer Howard Milstein, insists its problems are under control, analysts paint a bleak picture of a company that could snap under further stress without additional capital.

For the New York bank, 2009 — its first year — was one for the record books. While many other community banks were tempering growth or even shrinking, the $433 million-asset start-up grew faster in its first year than had almost any other U.S. bank established over the past decade.