Americas

The $54 million purchase of Pilgrim Bancshares will give Hometown branches in western, central and eastern Massachusetts.

The Ohio company said low unemployment is keeping business clients from expanding, while higher asking prices are forcing it to avoid bank acquisitions.

The bank, which would be only the second to call the Motor City home, would hire 500 people there while maintaining most of its workforce in Midland.

Prosperity Bancshares in Houston said that its earnings increased 19% from a year earlier as its efficiency ratio rose.

The company is once again positioning itself for growth now that it is no longer considered a systemically important financial institution.

The $26 million acquisition will allow Summit to enter two new counties in its home state.

The creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was widely expected to centralize regulation of payday and other high-cost loans in Washington. It hasn’t worked out that way.

Florida created headaches for the Georgia company during the financial crisis. Increased discipline, and wholesale changes to banking, make the $3 billion purchase of FCB Financial less risky, CEO Kessel Stelling says.

In a 2015 enforcement action, the San Francisco Fed said it had identified problems with the Pasadena, Calif., bank’s BSA and anti-money-laundering compliance programs.

The Mississippi company will also gain its first branches in southern Georgia as part of the $80 million deal.