Emclaire Financial Corp. of Emlenton, Pa., said it has a deal to acquire Elk County Savings and Loan Association in Ridgway.

The Tampa institution formerly known as Bay Financial Savings Bank is undergoing an extreme makeover, changing everything from its name to its charter to the makeup of its balance sheet.

PVF Capital Corp. in Solon, Ohio, could be the target of a hostile takeover by a shareholder who for the past year has been urging it to diversify its loan portfolio and overhaul its management.

Summit Bank in Arkadelphia, Ark., is entering a new era.

Rurban Financial Corp. in Defiance, Ohio, has taken a big step toward its goal of having $1 billion of assets within two years with an agreement to buy NBM Bancorp Inc. in Montpelier, Ohio, for $25 million in cash.

To improve capital after a spike in troubled loans, WGNB Corp. in Carrollton, Ga., is cutting its dividend in half and introducing a dividend reinvestment plan.

First National Bank Group Inc. in Edinburg, Tex., has sold off a large chunk of its stake in another Texas banking company that it had been pressing to either unload assets or put itself on the sale block.

Alaska banks have been in a rut in recent years because of the state's stagnant economy, but their fortunes could change soon as Alaska gears up for what is expected to be the world's largest construction project: a natural gas pipeline with an estimated price tag of $30 billion.

Citing a surge in nonperforming loans and recently discovered accounting errors, First Banks Inc. of St. Louis said that it expects to report a $5.5 million first-quarter loss and that its will restate its earnings for the past five years.

As nonaccruals climb and foreclosures mount, the role of the workout department becomes pivotal. Below are some thoughts on getting your workout group ready for the increased volume ahead.

In striking its second deal in a year, Harleysville National Corp. is expanding further in Pennsylvania's most attractive markets.

WEST

Farm Credit lenders did not get much of what they wanted in the latest farm bill passed by Congress, but they could soon gain more powers to invest in rural communities anyway under a proposal put forth by their regulator.

Florida banks could soon be hit with another wave of municipal deposits as cities and towns pull more of their money out of a state-run investment pool that has lost roughly $17 billion since November.

Capital Corp. of the West in Merced, Calif., reported a surprise first-quarter profit as its loss provision for impaired loans to residential developers came in lower than expected.

Since Franklin Bank Corp. was established in 2002, its organizers have made clear that their plan was to build the company through acquisitions and sell it for top dollar, much as they did with another Houston company, Bank United Corp.

Click here for the top 150 community banks with the largest farm loan portfolios.

Southwest Securities of Dallas is expanding into southern New Mexico. The banking unit of the $5.3 billion-asset SWS Group Inc. said Monday that it recruited a team of experienced bankers to establish a branch in Ruidoso by late July, its first outside of Texas.

Citing declining real estate values in its market area, Provident Financial Holdings Inc. in Riverside, Calif., said Monday that its earnings in the quarter that ended March 31 fell by 59% from the same period a year earlier, to $957,000. Earnings per share fell 58%, to 16 cents.