PacWest Bancorp in Los Angeles has agreed to buy Square 1 Financial in Durham, N.C.

An audit of Ginnie Mae financials identified four "material weaknesses" and one "significant deficiency," primarily related to the accounting of $6.6 billion in defaulted loans made by the failed lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker.

Popular and FirstBank gained critical branches and deposits in a region where growth is hard to come by. Some observers said it could also benefit the island to have one less competitor.

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A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including Dodd-Frank's impact on small institutions, Fed chair Janet Yellen's handling of attacks on her staff and Bitcoin's public but pseudonymous ledger.

Hudson City Bancorp in Paramus, N.J., has been released from an enforcement action with federal regulators.

Embattled mortgage servicer Ocwen Financial faces up to $26 billion in damage claims by bondholders and a greater risk of being fired as a mortgage servicer on thousands of small, private-label trusts.

The $1.4 billion-asset company said in a press release Friday that it will allow Richard Lashley, a co-founder of PL Capital, to join its board.

Regulators have shut Doral Bank, ending a tumultuous decade for the Puerto Rican bank. The $5.9 billion-asset Doral was the fourth bank to fail this year and the biggest bank to be closed since the $11 billion-asset Westernbank in Puerto Rico was shuttered in April 2010.

The surprising part of a recent report on U.S. stress tests is not that Deutsche Bank and Banco Santander might fail, but that large banks manage to pass any country's stress tests at all.

Debt collection held steady as the second ranked consumer complaint reported to the Federal Trade Commission, according to the federal agency's 2014 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book, which was released Friday.

Total lawsuits filed under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act rose in January while lawsuits citing violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act fell. The numbers reverse a trend from the past three years.

Jack Hartings is a vocal proponent of reduced regulation for small banks. But the CEO of Peoples Bank in Ohio wants Washington to force other industries to share the burden of improving cybersecurity and cleaning up after breaches.

First National Community Bancorp in Dunmore, Pa., will pay $1.5 million to resolve issues tied to the Bank Secrecy Act.

Fresh questions are being asked about the role of investors in the rental market and how their eventual exit may impact mortgage lending, property values and the economic recovery.

BancorpSouth in Tupelo, Miss., is planning to add a former Bank of America executive to its board.

CVB Financial in Ontario, Calif., will take a small hit in the first quarter after repaying a Federal Home Loan Bank advance.

Pamela Joseph, U.S. Bancorp's vice chair of payment services and a 10-year veteran of the Minneapolis-based bank, plans to retire in mid-2015.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and from our social media platforms.

Summit Financial Group in Moorefield, W.Va., has been freed from a five-year regulatory order.