Retail & Commercial

Two bank deals, one in New Jersey and the other in California, have won regulatory approval and are nearing completion.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon won majority support from investors to keep his chairman title in preliminary voting ahead of today's shareholder meeting, according to two people with knowledge of the tallies.

Like Jamie Dimon, a number of bank leaders have been in fights to keep their chairmanships from being lopped off in recent years. Many lost, and a few survived—but it's rarely pretty.

Mark Jaindl, a Pennsylvania banker, fell less than 100,000 short of shaking up the board at the parent of Home Savings Bank.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to hold a long-awaited vote later this week on the confirmation of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. With the opposition GOP planning to block the nomination, the move is a rehash of past battles and a sign that politics is once again trumping pragmatism in bank policymaking, argues Washington Bureau Chief Rob Blackwell. Ironically, the Republican's opposition will keep the CFPB focused largely on banks, rather than on their nonbank rivals, and could end up doing their banker friends more harm than good.

Ohio Valley Bank in Gallipolis has joined the Federal Reserve System.

Wintrust Financial in Rosemont, Ill., has retooled the ranks at its Wheaton Bank & Trust.

Licensed gun dealers are finding it increasingly hard to accept card-not-present credit card or debit card transactions, but companies such as Tasker Payment Gateways are not gun-shy when it comes to serving the firearms industry.

Many merchants are still wary about accepting bitcoins, but new vendor partnerships and a maturation of the companies that handle bitcoin exchanges address some of the virtual currency's riskier aspects.

Organic growth, dealmaking and innovation are taking a backseat to compliance, bank executives told KPMG in a new survey.