Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc., a publicly owned debt buyer and collection company, has hired Tara Privette as senior vice president, Core Operations.

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Barclays PLC, the U.K.'s second-largest bank by assets, plans to eliminate about 50 jobs in India as it narrows its focus on large companies in the nation, said two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The mortgage servicer Ocwen Financial is seeking a $575 million term loan B to finance its acquisition of Litton from Goldman Sachs.

The Los Angeles company is now telling investors it may scale back its ambitions and raise only what it needs to complete its acquisition of rival Center Financial Corp.

Continuing its rapid expansion in Massachusetts, People's United Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., announced Monday that it has opened three more branches in and around Boston.

Banks are increasingly dependent on their ability to obtain core deposits through branches, which means that a bank's branch footprint strategy, including its de novo strategy, is more important than ever.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is tiptoeing back into the U.S. after losing billions of dollars in a botched stateside push a decade ago.

While the failure pace is slowing, regulators are relying on another avenue to resolve troubled banks: mergers.

What would members think . . .

The $14 billion-asset Wintrust struck a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday for the assets and deposits of First Chicago Bank and Trust, its third FDIC transaction this year.

The move was a case study in how remote events like the Greek-induced European crisis and realities like the sputtering recovery back home can combine to affect daily business decisions at large financial services companies.

Why buy a whole bank when you can snap up its choicest assets? That appears to be the thinking of a growing number of acquirers these days as they troll for select assets and deposits rather than entire banks.

The second quarter ended June 30 brought a major rise in the number of M&A transactions in the accounts receivable management (ARM) space compared with the first quarter, according to M&A advisory firm Greenberg Advisors. The second quarter also saw a jump in average transaction size.

Herbert Lurie, who led many of the mega bank mergers of the 1990s as head of the financial institutions advisory practice at Merrill Lynch & Co., recently joined Guggenheim Partners as that firm works to raise its profile on Wall Street.

NCR, a maker of automated teller machines, self-service kiosks and other financial technology, is buying hospitality software developer Radiant Systems for $1.2 billion.

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Rising regulatory costs are forcing banks of all shapes and sizes to take a hard look at consolidation, including the mostly dormant field of mutually owned banks.