NEW ENGLAND

With its credit quality increasingly troubled, Midwest Banc Holdings Inc. was already among the relatively small group of banks to defer dividend payments on the government's preferred shares.

A member of the government's watchdog agency on Wednesday said the Small Business Administration should rethink elements of its program to delegate decision-making power to lenders.

First Insurance Funding, a unit of WinTrust Financial, paid $679.5M to become the largest traditional life insurance premium finance lender in North America, it said Tuesday.

Amcore Financial, a $5.1 billion-asset company in Rockford, Ill., reported a loss of $10.7M in the second quarter, its sixth consecutive loss.

Many customers who prefer a local touch, and talented bankers who want to offer it, are ripe for the plucking by surviving area banks.

Under Jay Sidhu, the former chairman and CEO of Sovereign Bancorp, New Century Bank, plans to launch an aggressive mortgage warehouse lending initiative.

Chemical Financial in Midland, Mich., said its 2Q profit dropped 76% from a year earlier because of a higher provision for loan losses and higher deposit insurance premiums.

Webster Financial Corp. of Waterbury, Conn., is getting a $115 million infusion from the private-equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC.

The Treasury Department is trying to hammer out legal details for a scheme to use Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to buy SBA-backed loans.

First Pittsburgh. Now Philadelphia. And First Niagara Financial Group Inc. says there's more to come. The Lockport, N.Y., company announced Monday that it had agreed to buy the struggling Harleysville National Corp. for $237 million in stock, or $5.50 a share. By itself, the deal would add $5.6 billion in assets and 83 branches in demographically attractive counties around Philadelphia to the $11.6 billion-asset First Niagara. Combined with a deal announced in April for 57 former National City Corp. branches in the western part of the Keystone State, the Harleysville National acquisition would increase First Niagara's asset size by 87% and double its branch count.

F.N.B. Corp. in Hermitage, Pa., said Friday it made progress on reducing its troubled Florida loans.

WASHINGTON — In one fell swoop, regulators seized a $2.8 billion-asset Georgia banking company and its six subsidiaries and sold them off to another bank in the state. The six failures, along with one earlier in the evening in New York State, brought the year’s total to 64. Since June 26, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has handled 24 failures, averaging almost five a week.

Nonperforming assets continued to rise at an already stressed Citizens Republic Bancorp of Flint, Mich., in the second quarter, as the Michigan economy deteriorated further.

With loan trouble continuing to escalate, United Community Banks Inc. in Blairsville, Ga., swung to a $23.1 million operating loss in the second quarter, from a $7.1 million operating profit a year earlier.

Recognizing the cash crunch many small businesses are facing, a Colorado banking company has come up with a plan to help them increase their visibility — and, it's hoped, their sales — without increasing their marketing budgets.

Despite a boost from the sale of its Colorado branches, First State Bancorp in Albuquerque said Thursday that it lost $6.2 million in the second quarter.

Capitol Bancorp Ltd. has spent years expanding into growth markets to offset the sputtering Michigan economy. But now Capitol, sputtering itself, is practically dumping its home state.