Woodforest National Bank, which has more branches in Wal-Mart Inc. stores in Texas - 114 - than any other bank, is now racing into Wal-Marts in the Southeast.

Two San Francisco-area banks have come up with a new twist on an old loan product that they say will allow more residents to afford apartment homes in one of the nation's most expensive cities.

Another community banking company, Intrust Financial Corp. of Wichita, is getting out of proprietary fund management - and blaming escalating regulatory restrictions and costs.

North Shore Bank in Brookfield, Wis., has hit on a strategy that could let it use other banks to expand its lending statewide without opening any branches or loan production offices.

A savings program sponsored by the Financial Service Centers of America, the country’s largest check-cashing trade group, has generated $5 million of deposits in its first six months.

MIDDLE ATLANTIC

In an unusual move, Millennium Bankshares Corp.'s shareholders have rejected its bid to buy a small, Charlottesville, Va., banking company and left Millennium's management with little choice but to call off the deal.

Hailed when it was announced in February as a savvy move that promised to bring an activist investor inside the fold and head off a bruising proxy fight, Yardville National Bancorp's consulting deal with Lawrence B. Seidman has all but collapsed.

Cardpoint PLC's stock plunged after it reported a wider annual loss and said there were delays in integrating Moneybox PLC, the rival it purchased in July to become the United Kingdom's No. 2 provider of automated teller machines.

A three-decade friendship between the heads of two Tennessee banks has led to a merger of equals.

Is Fidelity Bankshares Inc. in play?

FirstCity Financial Corp., a Waco, Tex., company that buys nonperforming loans from community banks, announced Monday that it plans to charter an industrial bank in Utah so it can begin buying good loans.

Berkshire Hills Bancorp in Pittsfield, Mass., has hired Thomas C. Crowley, a veteran Albany-area banker, as the president of its New York region.

Texas United Bancshares Inc. in La Grange has agreed to buy the $125 million-asset Northwest Bancshares of Roanoke, Tex.

Rabobank Group has no retail operations in the Midwest, but just the thought of the world's largest agricultural lender moving into the nation's heartland is making community bankers there a little nervous.

The pending merger of the New York Bankers Association and the Community Bankers Association of New York State would be the eighth between state bank and thrift trade groups since 2000.

After years of alerting consumers to the dangers of high-cost credit products such as payday loans and fee-based overdraft protection, the Consumer Federation of America is sounding the alarm on a new threat: car title loans.

Commercial Capital Corp. bought Hawthorne Financial Corp. in June 2004 largely for Hawthorne's deposits, but an investment bank's recent analysis of deposit trends at California banks and thrifts suggests that the acquisition has not worked out as well as planned.