American Banker predicted these five bankers would make news. Several delivered, mostly with small, strategic deals and finding ways to make money in spite of challenging conditions.

Regions Financial President and CEO Grayson Hall and the CEO of a Miami bank have been elected to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Add Investar Holding in Baton Rouge, La., to the growing list of community banks filing shelf registrations.

From the election's policy implications for banking to deep analysis of the Wells Fargo scandal, here are some of our favorite stories of the year. Stay tuned for Part II.

The similarities between the mortgage crisis and subprime auto lending in 2016 are all too obvious, with constrained cash flows, defaults and investor losses all likely.

The Federal Reserve has freed Cole Taylor Bank from an enforcement action two years after the Chicago bank was acquired by MB Financial.

Sussex Bancorp in Rockaway, N.J., has raised $15 million by selling fixed- to floating-rate subordinated notes to an institutional investor. It did not name the investor.

Regulators have warned about the dangers of high commercial real estate concentrations despite bankers' assertions that they are managing risk better than they did before the financial crisis. Still, CRE concerns could influence M&A and loan diversification in 2017.

With signs pointing to a possible rebound in de novo activity, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released a guide to potential organizers about the application process.

FirstBank in Lakewood, Colo., named the successors to its CEO and president, who are both retiring after holding those titles for 17 years.

At a time when individual accountability at corporations is mounting, here is how compliance officers can detect and prevent fraud occurrences within their own firms.

Equity Bancshares in Wichita, Kan., has raised $35.4 million in a common stock offering and plans to use the proceeds to pay down a line of credit and support growth.

Lenders should be braced for some potential headaches as oil-related bankruptcies are expected to continue at a steady clip in 2017 and various market and political forces could influence oil supplies and prices.

The overall pace of consolidation slowed this year, but the average deal value increased from 2015 as bigger banks continued to get back into mergers and acquisitions. Several of this year's sellers were banks that had been backed by private equity in search of growth or a post-crisis turnaround.

Castle Creek Capital has sold its entire stake in Heritage Commerce in San Jose, Calif.

First Midwest Bancorp in Itasca, Ill., has hired the former chief financial officer at Fulton Financial, about two weeks after he announced his resignation from the Lancaster, Pa., company.

The National Credit Union Administration acted appropriately, within its legal authority, when issuing its member business lending rule.

A former senior teller at Exchange National Bank & Trust in Atchison, Kan., has been sentenced to prison time and ordered to pay restitution after pleading guilty to an embezzlement scheme.

First Commonwealth Financial in Indiana, Pa., has hired a former Regions Financial executive to lead several of its consumer lending groups.

Scandal, business models gone awry, missing money and executive shake-ups — 2016 had it all. Here are the financial services executives or groups of them who took the heat and will be looking for better times in 2017.