Banking

BBVA Compass CIO Sergio Fidalgo has been promoted to head of applications and architecture for the bank's parent company, Madrid-based BBVA Group.

Former Citigroup payments executive Raja Rajamannar will be the new chief marketing officer at MasterCard, effective September 9.

A new Jack Henry program can speed EMV-chip card migration for card issuers by up to a year — but only for credit cards, since ongoing legal issues hamper the use of EMV for debit cards.

The Federal Reserve Board has released Raton Capital in Raton, N.M., from an enforcement action.

Superior Bancshares in Hazelwood, Mo., has reportedly agreed to sell a 40% stake in itself to an investor group.

Premier Commercial Bank in Greensboro, N.C., has held a beach-theme office party, brown-bag lunches on weighty matters like the cost of health insurance, and other special events to stand out in its market. It works.

Regional banks are expected to see a huge drop-off in mortgage originations over the second half of 2013 as interest rates continue to rise.

Dwight Utz, who is leaving VantageSouth in North Carolina five months after it bought his bank, says he is looking for CEO jobs Virginia, Maryland or Pennsylvania.

Merchants will be better off with a multibillion-dollar price-fixing settlement with Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. over swipe fees than they would be if they went to trial, a court appointed expert said.

Bill Heffernan has done it all over four decades in Miami banking, and has even been a mayor of a small town. Now, as a new board member of Apollo Bank, he'll advise the community bank on growth strategies.

BankUnited (BKU) says a factoring firm overstated its relationship with the Miami Lakes, Fla., bank.

City Bank Texas's latest mobile update points to its greater goal of enticing customers to a lower cost channel while also solving customer pain points.

"Insane" is how one bank CEO characterized what he's seen recently in the competition among banks to win business by loosening loan terms. American Banker editors discuss the trend and the dangers it poses.

The Federal Reserve Board has given Valley National Bancorp in Wayne, N.J., approval to redeem $127.5 million of trust-preferred securities.

State Bank Financial Corp. in Atlanta has named a new credit guru.

Jim Simpson, CTO of City Bank Texas, explains how and why his community bank has been the first U.S. bank to go live with several new mobile banking tools.

Antivirus and security software company Kaspersky Lab reported good and bad news Thursday in its latest look at the state of spam and phishing all over the world. The amount of spam and phishing attacks being generated remains steady, but malicious email attachments are increasing, the most popular of which are banking Trojans.

Community Financial Shares (CFIS) in Glen Ellyn, Ill., plans to issue $2.8 million of common stock in a private placement.

The banking industry earned a record profit for the second straight quarter as growth in noninterest income continued to make up for a slow recovery in the lending sector, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Thursday.

Heartland Financial (HTLF) in Dubuque, Iowa, plans to raise up to $75 million.