Commercial lending

A number of New York banks are stepping away from medallion lending as delinquencies rise and competition for fares intensifies.

Western Alliance Bancorp's Bridge Bank in San Jose, Calif., has created a lending group to focus on the life sciences sector.

The marketplace lender is paying $30 million in cash plus an undisclosed amount of stock. It plans to use BillGuard’s apps, which come with detailed information about their users’ financial habits, to attract new borrowers.

Webster Financial in Waterbury, Conn., has opened an Atlanta office to focus on asset-based lending in the southeastern U.S.

CommonBond has expanded its student loan refinancing program to more than 2,000 universities at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Money360, a marketplace lender that focuses on commercial real estate, has hired mortgage industry veteran Gary Bechtel as its president.

The profound disruption that has led to the rise of challengers like Apple, PayPal and Square can ultimately drive innovation across the financial services industry.

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Fundera, which runs a website where small-business owners can shop for loans, has raised $11.5 million in new equity funding.

Not only do rules imposed under the Dodd-Frank Act threaten regional banks' lending capabilities, they could actually wind up increasing risk to the financial system.

The third quarter ends in two weeks, and top executives at Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and two regional banks are raising concerns about cost pressures, impediments to revenue growth and heightened lending risks.

A Federal Reserve decision is expected soon on M&T's long-delayed application to buy Hudson City Bancorp. M&T would still get strategic benefits it sought, but Hudson City has shrunk and become less profitable since it agreed to sell three years ago, and the cost of the deal has risen.

CircleBack Lending, a Boca Raton, Fla., marketplace lender, has completed a $17.4 million round of equity financing.

A small Internet-focused bank plans to offer Prosper Marketplace's personal loans directly to its own customers through the bank's website. Prosper could use it as a template for deals with other banks.

Brayden McCarthy and Jared Hecht of Fundera argue that the Small Business Borrowers' Bill of Rights, a self-regulatory document written by online small-business lenders, should serve as a template for future government regulation of the sector.

PeerIQ, which provides data to firms that invest in marketplace loans, has raised $2.5 million in early-stage financing.

Loan-to-value ratios in commercial real estate lending have returned to their levels from the bubble days, Moody's says. Loss-rates look good for now, but trouble could be coming.

Funding Circle has formed a partnership with H&R Block to provide loans to the tax preparation firm’s small-business customers.

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Bank of Montreal, Canada's fourth-largest lender, has agreed to buy General Electric's transportation finance business in the U.S. and Canada.