Retail & Commercial

Nearly a year after calling off a stock sale that would have sharply diluted the value of its shares, Independent Bank in Ionia, Mich., said it would instead raise capital by selling off a batch of branches.

Prices garnered prior to the crisis have little in common with what banks are worth today or what they will likely be worth in the future. Yet boards and managers remain irrationally fixated on outdated, irrelevant valuations.

Cardinal Bankshares' yearlong battle with an activist investor ended with a deadlocked board, an ousted chairman and a lot of uncertainty. The biggest challenge for all parties is determining who is in charge.

Plans to unify mortgage securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been top of mind at several events this month, as the mortgage industry works to jumpstart the securities market in the wake of the financial crisis.

If JPMorgan Chase's trading blowup raised worries about booby traps at other financial giants, it might be comforting to know that its securities portfolio is more complex — and perhaps trickier to hedge — than those of rival megabanks.

Vantiv is offering Ingenico's new point of sale products in an effort to prepare the industry for the EMV chip-card standard and Near Field Communication technology.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority on Tuesday fined Citigroup Global Markets Inc. $3.5 million in a settlement related to charges of nonconforming residential mortgage-backed securities violations that Citi neither admitted to nor denied.

Citigroup, a somewhat frequent seller of nonperforming loans, is in the market with a $99 million package of troubled residential mortgages, according to investors that have looked at the package.

Intermountain Community Bancorp had hoped to raise up to $8.7 million from existing shareholders, but the Sandpoint, Idaho, company only got 40% of the way there.

Bank of America will buy back $330 million of home mortgages from Freddie Mac because the bank did not get full appraisals on some properties, raising concerns that some newly originated loans are not meeting underwriting guidelines.