If the first quarter is any indication, 2005 could go down as the slowest year for bank acquisitions since the early 1990s.

My favorite Ann Landers column is about the girl who writes that she has not asked her boyfriend to help pay for her birth-control pills, because “I don’t know him well enough to talk about money.”

First Dakota National Bank in Yankton, S.D., is teaming up with Cargill Inc. to offer farm loans with a built-in hedge against swings in commodity prices.

Even at a time when community bank stocks have fallen somewhat out of favor, the sharp drop in Harleysville National Corp.'s stock since the start of 2005 is puzzling.

Charles M. Snipes, the president and chief executive officer of Bank of Granite Corp., said a weak economy in its core market area put a damper on first-quarter earnings.

Colony Bankcorp Inc. of Fitzgerald, Ga., announced Monday that its first-quarter earnings rose 12.9% from the same period last year, to $2.1 million.

To strengthen its offerings to companies that do business in China, UCBH Holdings Inc. has opened representative offices in Shenzhen and in Taipei, Taiwan.

BancTrust Financial Group Inc. in Mobile, Ala., is selling its Sweet Water State Bank subsidiary to a group headed by Sweet Water chief executive Stratton F. Lewis.

Home Bancshares Inc. in Conway, Ark., has nearly doubled its assets in the last 18 months by acquiring three banks in its home state, and its chief executive said it has no plans to slow down.

When Varghese Chacko came to America 20 years ago from his native India, he tried to get a bank loan to start a direct mail business.

Several Texas banks are poised to capitalize on commercial loan growth as the economy in the nation's second-largest state improves.

In the dozen years through 2004 only two community banks were founded on New York's Long Island. Now two have opened there in four weeks - in the same Nassau County town.

Mercantile Bank Corp. of Wyoming, Mich., said strong commercial loan growth powered it to net income of $4.4 million in the first quarter, 47% more than a year earlier.

MIDDLE ATLANTIC

Rabobank International of the Netherlands announced Wednesday that it had received a national bank charter and changed the name of its California subsidiary from Valley Independent Bank to Rabobank NA.

Hundreds of companies have missed the deadline for complying with the most contentious provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act - section 404's auditing rules. Hundreds more, including dozens of small banking companies, have delisted their stocks or sold themselves to avoid complying.

It is not too late to pick a student intern or two to work at your bank this summer.

Once or twice every weekday for the last 12 years, Ray Petty, the owner of Ray's Supermarket in Factoryville, Pa., would send an employee down the street to the Community Bank and Trust branch to pick up rolls of change or deposit the day's receipts.

After almost 10 years as a lender to small businesses, Salem Five Cents Savings Bank in Massachusetts is moving upstream.