Pacific Capital Bancorp's announcement early Tuesday that it has stopped making controversial holiday and paystub loans appears to be the final blow to products that consumer groups have labeled as predatory.

Suffolk Bancorp in Riverhead, N.Y., said its first-quarter earnings fell 1.4% from a year earlier, to $5.1 million.

Continuing its expansion in metropolitan Atlanta, Security Bank Corp. of Macon, Ga., announced that it is buying the $252 million-asset First Commerce Community Bankshares Inc. in Douglasville.

Just weeks after being named president of New Century Bancorp Inc. in Dunn, N.C., William L. Hedgepeth 2nd has added the title of chief executive officer.

Pinnacle Financial Partners Inc. in Nashville is planning an expansion into the Knoxville market and has selected two SunTrust Banks Inc. executives to lead that effort.

Shares of Columbia Bancorp of The Dalles, Ore., plunged Monday in the first trading session after the company announced that it would report lower-than-expected first-quarter earnings as a result of margin contraction and a sizable loan chargeoff.

The Securities and Exchange Commission took a small step last week toward relaxing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's most onerous provision, but community bankers were expecting something more.

LSB Bancshares Inc. and FNB Financial Services Corp. said they have selected the name NewBridge Bank for the bank that would result from their recently announced deal.

The demise of the Dallas law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist has been a boon for the Richmond, Va., firm Hunton & Williams LLP.

MIDWEST

Coast Financial Holdings Inc. has lost more than half its market value in the last three months, and now it faces the prospect of a costly legal fight with angry shareholders.

Commerce Bancshares Inc. of Kansas City, Mo., announced a $29.5 million deal Tuesday to buy the privately held Commerce Bank in Aurora, Colo.

An Illinois pilot program aimed at curbing predatory lending in low-income neighborhoods has been so unpopular with borrowers, consumer advocates, and lenders that state regulators have halted it and gone back to the drawing board.

Nearly a year after being forced out of the payday lending business, First Bank of Delaware has bowed to regulatory pressure and will stop making third-party consumer installment loans.

An unusual bidding war for a small Massachusetts thrift is escalating again.

TIB-The Independent Bankers Bank in Irving, Tex., has been offering its correspondent services to banks in California for five years but has missed out on one lucrative piece of business there: holding funds in escrow for banks in organization.

For all the convergence and consolidation in financial services, there is one kind of deal that so rarely gets mentioned even as a possibility that some may wonder if it is even an option: Can a bank or a thrift buy a credit union?

Columbia Banking System Inc. in Tacoma is inching closer to its goal of becoming a regional banking company.

Washington Banking Co. in Oak Harbor, Wash., announced Thursday that it has promoted John L. Wagner to president and chief executive officer of its banking subsidiary, Whidbey Island Bank. Its previous president and CEO, Michael D. Cann, retains those titles with the $792 million-asset holding company, focusing on strategic initiatives.