The once-acquisitive company announced after the market closed Wednesday that it had hired the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods to review strategic alternatives, including a sale.

It's often the basic and simple good will gestures that generate the kind of awareness and positive personal impressions that "marketing campaigns" can seldom deliver.

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With no capital left, Irwin Financial Corp. is pinning its hopes for survival on a new program from the Treasury Department that may not even exist. The $3.4 billion-asset company reported Wednesday that, after seven quarters of losses, its total risk-based capital has dipped below zero. Though both Irwin's bank and its thrift remained adequately capitalized at the end of the second quarter, regulators have given the thrift until Aug. 31 to boost its capital or face a forced sale or liquidation.

Umpqua Holdings Corp. plans to aggressively expand its private banking unit as other, smaller banks divest such businesses. Donna Huntsman, who was hired Monday to be a senior vice president of private banking, said she expects the Roseburg, Ore., company to have at least $900 million of private banking assets under management in three years.

The $3.8 billion-asset First Financial missed out on the boom years, spending the middle part of the decade quitting unprofitable business lines and markets, and shedding employees.

We need a diverse industry held accountable by able state and federal authorities armed with the legal and statutory tools necessary to provide effective consumer protection.

The Federal Reserve Board ordered Michigan's troubled Warren Bank to quickly boost capital or find a buyer.

After a consent order from its regulators landed it in default on a line of credit, Amcore Financial Inc. in Rockford, Ill., has paid down some of the debt and gotten an extension to repay the rest.

Hampton Roads Bankshares in Norfolk, Va., swung to a loss for the second quarter, suspended its common share dividend and said it plans to offer stock.

The survival of the fittest has definitely played out among banks competing for middle-market business customers, according to more than 6,000 such companies.

With public sentiment running so hard against the banking industry these days the story of Dwelling House Savings and Loan Association, a $13.4 million minority-controlled mutual in Pittsburgh, is nothing short of amazing.Community leaders have rallied around the thrift for the past few months after cyber thieves took more than $3 million through fraudulent automated clearing house transactions, leaving the thrift with a $1 million capital hole.

MADISON, Wis. – UW CU said yesterday it has agreed to purchase a 14,00-square-foot building in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa from AMCORE Bank, which the credit union will turn into its third branch in Milwaukee.

Regulators closed institutions in five states late Friday, bringing the year's toll to 69 and leaving the FDIC with almost $1 billion more in losses.

SP Acquisition Holdings Inc., a blank check company with $429 million to spend, has agreed to buy the $4 billion-asset Frontier through a share exchange and then recapitalize its bank.

As FSI Group LLC prepared to pour $40 million into Security Bank Corp. last year, it considered what it thought would be the worst-case scenario.

Though the seizure of Security Bank Corp.'s six banks did nothing to change Georgia's reputation as a failure hub, many are calling the resolution the best thing to happen to the state's banking market in years.

A year after posting its first loss, Corus Bankshares is out of capital and out of options. The $7 billion-asset Chicago company reported Friday that it lost $487.3 million in the second quarter, leaving its bank unit with a capital deficit of $157 million.