Sky Financial Group Inc. of Bowling Green, Ohio, has agreed to buy Prospect Bancshares of Worthington for $46.9 million in cash and stock.

As consumer brands go, BankPlus may not have the name recognition of DirecTV or Reebok, but the three companies share a celebrity spokesman: the New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

NEW ENGLAND

Citizens Financial Group of Providence, R.I., has been ordered to change the name of its Citizens Bank in one western Pennsylvania county, because consumers are confusing it with a bank with a similar name.

When students ask me how to get into the world of banking, I often tell them, "Become a bank examiner."

Franklin Bank of Houston aims to be a major player in Texas by avoiding the hot urban markets being targeted by out-of-state giants.

People's Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., said Monday that its president and chief executive, John A. Klein, has undergone successful cancer surgery and is expected to return to work in early October.

Credit union industry lobbyists are not letting a Government Accountability Office report halt their campaign to ease what they call a looming capital crisis at many of the country’s best-run and fastest-growing credit unions.

The California Department of Financial Institutions is turning the tables on the famed Camels rating — it is asking bankers to rate its examiners on six indicators of performance.

Rurban Financial Corp. of Defiance, Ohio, has made the first dividend payment on its trust-preferred stock since entering into a regulatory agreement in July 2002.

The troubled North Country Financial Corp. of Manistique, Mich., said former chairman and chief executive Ronald G. Ford, who agreed in June to pay $500,000 to settle a class action, has resigned from its board.

Continuing its expansion in the Albany, N.Y., area, First Niagara Financial Group Inc. has acquired a Rensselaer lease-brokerage firm.

United Community Financial Corp. of Youngstown, Ohio, disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it added $1.04 million to its loss reserves for a bloc of 13 consumer loans with a value of $6 million that it classified as impaired after a recent portfolio review.

Is the Dallas-Fort Worth area big enough for two banks with similar names?

In an echo of the merger-and-acquisition heyday of the mid- to late 1990s, banks seem more willing to make dilutive deals - those that temporarily reduce per-share earnings - than they had been in the past few years.

After acquiring Retirement Systems Group Inc., Peter Del Col decided he would have to offer more than just 401(k) plans to his roster of community bank clients.

MIDWEST

Placer Sierra Bancshares of Sacramento is buying First Financial Bancorp, the parent of the $324 million-asset Bank of Lodi, for $50 million in cash.

Less than six months after its initial public offering, Signature Bank of New York, which is majority owned by Bank Hapoalim BM, said it is planning its second.