New York

It just got harder for banks in Georgia to enforce noncompete agreements in employee contracts. For employees of two merging banks, BB&T and SunTrust, the timing couldn’t be better.

The Department of Financial Services has created a statewide financial protection division focused on corporate compliance and consumer issues, in line with steps taken by New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The good times continue to roll for two New York City marshals whose work collecting debts for predatory lenders is making them millionaires.

"If you gathered the U.S.-based senior counsels of the major Chinese banks operating in the United States," said Joseph Loffredo, assistant general manager and chief financial officer at the New York branch of China Merchants Bank, "you'd find one outlier, a lady about half the age of most of the others."

In a strategy that other CUs could follow, Concord Federal Credit Union is working with a local nonprofit to provide better access to financial products in central Brooklyn.

A successor to Robert Allen, who has led the $7.3 billion-asset institution for more than three decades, should be named soon.

The company, which is planning to revamp its organizational structure, has seen a sharp increase in funding costs over the past year.

Price Chopper Employees Federal Credit Union is the second institution to merge into the Latham, N.Y.-based Sunmark in recent months.

Intercontinental Exchange Inc. has been facing resistance from federal regulators over a key part of its ambitious plan to bring Bitcoin to the masses. Now, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange is turning to state watchdogs to get the project over the goal line.

CEO Joseph DePaolo lamented the tough funding environment after the New York bank said deposit costs jumped 90% in the first quarter. Signature was the second bank Wednesday to report a drag on profits from funding costs.