Banking

Columbia Banking System has agreed to buy West Coast Bancorp. The acquisition, valued at about $506 million, will create a community bank in the Pacific Northwest with more than $7 billion in assets.

Metro Bank in Harrisburg, Pa., will pay $1.5 million to settle claims that it violated the Bank Secrecy Act.

Sen. Dick Durbin, who led the effort to cap debit interchange fees last year, responded to the banking and credit union lobbies’ letters to Congress last week, saying the cap has resulted in a victory for consumers.

HomeTrust Bancshares in Asheville, N.C., has adopted a so-called "tax preservation plan," which is designed to protect a company's deferred tax assets during a lengthy period of operating losses.

Market participants will quickly fill the home finance gap. Financing homes is an excellent business. The S&Ls were successful in this market for 50 years before they were destroyed by government policy.

A study guide has just been released as a companion to a recent hardcover book aimed at the acquiring industry.

The operators of a Philadelphia-based telemarketing scheme will pay more than $7.5 million to settle FTC charges that they peddled bogus credit cards and illegally debited consumers’ bank accounts.

As the new iPhone 5 gets into consumers’ hands, so too does Apple’s new limited mobile wallet app, Passbook, a single platform for storing movie tickets, boarding passes, gift cards and retail coupons.

Wells Fargo (WFC) said Tuesday that some of its customers had trouble logging on to its website, roughly a week after online customers of Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) encountered similar delays.

LAUREL, Md. – Tower FCU has contracted with CO-OP Financial Services to drive its ATM terminals.

The Norfolk, Va., company announced on Monday that Charles M. Johnston, a former chief financial officer at Eastern Bank in Boston, had joined its board.

The SEC has charged three former executives of TierOne, a failed bank in Nebraska, with misleading investors about the extent of the bank's losses during the financial crisis.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced a new system Tuesday for classifying violations of consumer-protection rules that the agency spots during exams.

The Federal Reserve Board has lifted a written agreement with Ames Community Bank in Iowa that required the company to improve its credit administration.

The official at the center of a controversial Monday Night Football call is a vice president at Bank of America.

The National Credit Union Administration filed a lawsuit against Barclays, alleging the bank's sale of faulty mortgage-backed securities to two corporate credit unions — U.S. Central and WesCorp — contributed to their 2009 collapse.

The National Fair Housing Alliance says Bank of America has failed to maintain foreclosed properties in minority neighborhoods. It lodged similar complaints against Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp earlier this year.

At least a dozen community banks have planned new headquarters in the past year, either by building offices or leasing new digs. Some of the banks outgrew older offices, while others took advantage of low interest rates and great pricing to make the move.

Dwight Utz wanted to accelerate his North Carolina company's growth by bringing in private equity. Less than year after ECB's plans fell through, the company agreed to sell to Crescent Financial, which has plenty of backing from private equity firms.

Scotiabank in Canada has started issuing cards on the American Express network, the companies said on Monday.