Richard Berner, a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told members of a House Financial Services subcommittee that the new Office of Financial Research is "working diligently to satisfy its statutory mandates and mission."

Warren, now leading the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said while the new regulator reserves the right to halt marketing of financial services that are not consumer-friendly, there is no need for such a prohibition from the outset.

Didn't banks learn from the savings and loan crisis in the early 1990s?

ECB Bancorp in Englehard, N.C., announced after the market closed Thursday that it is buying seven branches and $195 million of deposits in North Carolina from Hampton Roads Bancshares Inc. of Norfolk, Va.

Financial Plus Credit Union this week became the first company in the country to sign on to use FiSync, Dwolla's integration tool that shortens the process of linking accounts with the alternative payment provider from days to seconds.

DCB Financial Corp. in Lewis Center, Ohio, is closing a quarter of its branches and cutting 18% of its workforce in the next 90 days, according to a news report.

Shares of Lakeland Bancorp Inc. fell nearly 8% Thursday after the Oak Ridge, N.J., company reported second-quarter earnings that missed analysts' expectations.

NorthEast Community Bancorp Inc. is ready to make a gutsy move — an aggressive push into Boston that also involves originating its first single-family mortgages in roughly two decades.

Two New England thrifts have beefed up their commercial-lending operations by hiring teams of bankers from recently acquired banks.

First Place Financial Corp. said this week that it has launched an audit of its 2009 results and that it now operating under a cease-and-desist order from the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Driven by improved credit quality and double-digit increases in bank card and trust fees, Commerce Bancshares in Kansas City, Mo., reported a profit of $69 million in the second quarter, up 16% from the same period a year earlier.

Bank of Ozarks Inc. in Little Rock posted record earnings in the second quarter after acquisitions of two failed banks helped boost net income by more than 360%.

NBT Bancorp Inc. of Norwich, N.Y., is expanding into western Massachusetts with a deal to purchase four branches from Legacy Bancorp of Pittsfield, Mass.

Improved asset quality, lower credit costs and gains on investment securities powered Washington Federal Inc. in Seattle to a $30.1 million profit in the quarter that ended June 30, an increase of 138% over the same period in 2010.

IMGCAP(1)]

VSB Bancorp Inc. said Wednesday that second-quarter earnings fell 7.5% largely because of lower yields on securities and loans during the period.

The Bank of South Carolina Corp. is on pace to beat its profit target for the full year thanks to strong second-quarter results, its president said Wednesday.

What would members think . . .

The $14 billion-asset Wintrust struck a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday for the assets and deposits of First Chicago Bank and Trust, its third FDIC transaction this year.