Retail & Commercial

OGDENBURG, N.Y. -- St. Lawrence FCU has announced plans to expand their branch and main office at 800 Commerce Park Drive with a 10,944-square-foot addition.

DETROIT – Detroit Metropolitan CU celebrated a new branch opened inside the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.

HSBC has named Prabhat Vira as head of trade and receivables finance for its commercial banking business in North America.

A unit of Heartland Financial USA (HTLF) in Dubuque, Iowa, has completed its acquisition of First Shares in Platteville, Wis., for $10.9 million.

The mortgage giant is aiming to cut premiums by hundreds of millions of dollars and end payments to banks. Now it needs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, its regulator, to go along.

Hurricane Sandy is likely to stir up credit card delinquencies in the next month or so, but performance remained strong in the batch of recent reports.

Joe Slavens, the CEO of Northwest Bank & Trust in Iowa, has diversified to cope with weakening loan demand in the Quad Cities. He's got plans for dealing with higher taxes and other community bank challenges.

Joseph Smith, who is monitoring the $25 billion national mortgage settlement agreement, says he is "encouraged" by banks' progress, but he cautioned that their numbers fail to take into account that short sales carry less weight in certain states.

Sales of previously owned homes rose in October while the supply of homes for sale sank to its lowest in nearly a decade.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a stark warning to mortgage lenders and brokers on Monday, arguing they must stop running "potentially misleading advertisements," including those targeting veterans and older Americans.