Private equity fixed Pacific Capital and has agreed to sell it to UnionBanCal for a healthy price in a slow M&A market. There could have been more deals like this had regulators embraced PE.

William S. Haraf, the commissioner of California's Department of Financial Institutions, has resigned from the post, effective Friday.

Two small Kansas banks that have been discussing a merger for much of the past year have finally pulled the trigger on a deal.

Bank customers are making fewer regular visits to their local branches, which aren't getting cheaper for banks to maintain — but bankers are sharply divided on how to fix their branch problems.

Fox Chase Bancorp Inc. in Hatboro, Pa., said the planned sale of a pool of problem consumer loans has fallen through and that, as a result, its total nonperforming assets were higher in the fourth quarter than it initially reported.

The Credit Union National Association launched a radio campaign to help save House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus, who is being challenged by a Tea Party-backed candidate in Tuesday's Republican primary.

First South Bancorp Inc. in Washington, N.C., has tapped the chief financial officer at another North Carolina bank to be its next president and chief executive.

UnionBanCal is taking the unusual step of marking up the value of Pacific Capital's loan portfolio as part of its $1.5 billion deal for the Santa Barbara, Calif., lender.

Madison National Bancorp Inc. said on Monday that Daniel L. Murphy, the co-chairman and chief executive of the Melville, N.Y., company, has died.

Union Bank of California is buying bank holding company Pacific Capital, in one of the largest bank deals in years.

Large financial institutions dominate most of the nation's biggest cities. There are still some metropolitan areas where a community bank has the most deposits, often by wide margins. Here are some notable examples, based on June 30 data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

In what would be its largest acquisition in more 15 years, UnionBanCal Corp. in San Francisco is buying Pacific Capital Corp. in Santa Barbara, Calif., for about $1.5 billion in cash.

Longtime community bank investor Eric Hovde has traded Washington D.C. for Wisconsin in the hopes of taking up residence in the nation's capitol.

For a second time in three weeks, regulators have shuttered a bank that others were unwilling to acquire.

Prices fell and the pace of dealmaking slowed last month, but March started off strong with another big deal in Texas.

Richard Hendrix, the president and CEO of FBR & Co., says that earnings and price expectations must "reset" for capital to come back to banks. In a wide-ranging Q&A, he discussed bankers' reluctant to tap capital markets and his belief that it could take time before a meaningful level of IPOs take place.

To create a mobile banking offering that can compete with banks or the likes of Google, the prepaid card marketer Green Dot is purchasing the location-based deals company Loopt.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has ended a formal agreement with City National Bank of Florida.

Buoyed by strong top-line revenue growth and improved asset quality, the $1.2 billion-asset First Business Financial Services in Madison, Wis., reported record profits in 2011.

Three years ago, the Seattle bank was struggling mightily with bad loans and diminishing capital. A recently completed IPO put $96 million back into the bank, putting it on the path to recovery.