Banking

Opus Bank in Irvine, Calif., has formed a commercial real estate banking division made up of Opus' income-property banking division and its newly formed structured finance unit.

Competition for large corporate loans is as intense as ever and, until it eases, the Dallas bank is content to let its middle-market lending drive profits.

Herb Allison, who died Sunday, turned out to have far more in common with his critics than seemed possible during the heat of the financial crisis.

Co3 Systems announced Tuesday that it’s expanding its Privacy Module software to include definitions, regulations and news about data breaches in the European Union.

Sauce Labs, the San Francisco cloud-based mobile and web application testing solution provider Tuesday today announced an enhancement to its product and a fresh round of venture capital funding.

Notwithstanding recent media criticism, there is little doubt that these products offer a better alternative for unbanked and underbanked consumers who would otherwise use a cash-based system to manage their finances.

Prepaid card and technology provider InComm has launched an in-store digital sales program, allowing consumers to buy digital gift cards and other virtual items alongside physical ones at brick-and-mortar merchant locations.

WICHITA, Kan. – Faced with diminishing prospects on its multi-billion dollars of corporate credit union claims, NCUA filed yesterday to appeal last week’s ruling by the U.S. District Court here dismissing the credit union regulator’s $555 million of claims against Barclays Capital for the sale of faulty mortgage-backed securities to U.S. Central FCU and WesCorp FCU, the two biggest credit union failures ever.

Capital One Financial Corp. (COF) is in talks to take about 250,000 square feet of offices at the UBS Building on Manhattan's Park Avenue.

Wilson Bank & Trust will become one of the first banks to test MoneyDesktop's latest marketing capabilities.

Lending surged at Customers Bancorp in Wyomissing, Pa., this spring, allowing the $3.8 billion-asset company to report profits of $8.2 million in the second quarter, up 26% from the same period in 2012.

Hedge funds have beaten the FDIC in a series of legal disputes over the assets of bankrupt holding companies, exposing a serious flaw in the regulator's system for recovering value from failed institutions.

Reliance Financial Corp. in Atlanta has agreed to buy the trust and asset management business of Grand Bank and Trust of Florida in West Palm Beach.

Comerica in Dallas reported flat quarterly earnings as cost cuts and improved credit quality offset a dip in lending revenue.

The most notable quotes from American Banker stories of the previous week. Readers are encouraged to add their own observations in the Comments fields at the bottom of each slide.

Have you ever imagined starting your own bitcoin exchange? Soon, Vancouver-based Bex.io will make that possible by deploying exchange functionality under a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Branch numbers will grow again while the industry’s total branch square footage goes down. More customers will choose their banks based on the availability of a branch they won’t use all that much.

Herbert Allison Jr., the onetime president of Merrill Lynch & Co. who oversaw the U.S. government's bank-bailout program following the financial crisis that led to his former company becoming a unit of Bank of America Corp., has died. He was 69.

Kipochi, an African online service launched this month, is looking for a way to connect the digital currency Bitcoin to M-Pesa, Kenya's widely-used mobile payments system.