Americas

Aiming to increase its trust assets under management, WSFS Financial Corp. in Wilmington, Del., has formed a seven-member advisory board to help it better serve existing clients and identify new ones.

Shares of Orrstown Financial Inc. fell sharply Friday after the Shippensburg, Pa., company warned that it expects to take a larger-than-expected provision for loan losses in the second quarter.

ECB Bancorp in Englehard, N.C., announced after the market closed Thursday that it is buying seven branches and $195 million of deposits in North Carolina from Hampton Roads Bancshares Inc. of Norfolk, Va.

DCB Financial Corp. in Lewis Center, Ohio, is closing a quarter of its branches and cutting 18% of its workforce in the next 90 days, according to a news report.

Shares of Lakeland Bancorp Inc. fell nearly 8% Thursday after the Oak Ridge, N.J., company reported second-quarter earnings that missed analysts' expectations.

NorthEast Community Bancorp Inc. is ready to make a gutsy move — an aggressive push into Boston that also involves originating its first single-family mortgages in roughly two decades.

Two New England thrifts have beefed up their commercial-lending operations by hiring teams of bankers from recently acquired banks.

First Place Financial Corp. said this week that it has launched an audit of its 2009 results and that it now operating under a cease-and-desist order from the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Driven by improved credit quality and double-digit increases in bank card and trust fees, Commerce Bancshares in Kansas City, Mo., reported a profit of $69 million in the second quarter, up 16% from the same period a year earlier.

Bank of Ozarks Inc. in Little Rock posted record earnings in the second quarter after acquisitions of two failed banks helped boost net income by more than 360%.