NEW ENGLAND

The U.S. Mint's redesigned $1 coin goes into circulation today, seven years after the largely disappointing introduction of the Sacagawea dollar.

Eager to boost its retail presence in the Middle Atlantic region, M&T Bank Corp. of Buffalo is planning to open a branch this June in one of Maryland’s most frequented locations: the Southwest Airlines terminal at Baltimore/Washington International Airport.

Eager to boost its retail presence in the Middle Atlantic region, M&T Bank Corp. of Buffalo is planning to open a branch this June in one of Maryland's most frequented locations: the Southwest Airlines terminal at Baltimore/Washington International Airport.

Two small mutual thrifts in Massachusetts said last week that they plan to merge — the sixth such deal to be announced in four months.

A year after it won its hard-fought campaign to convert from a credit union, ViewPoint Bank in Plano, Tex., has found the transition to a mutual savings bank, and then to a public thrift, anything but easy.

Greater Atlantic Financial Corp. in Reston, Va., said Monday that it had received a letter indicating that its shareholder equity has fallen below Nasdaq's minimum requirement for listing.

Lafayette Federal Credit Union in Kensington, Md., has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit alleging that its former chief executive and his son tried to sabotage the credit union's bid to convert to a mutual savings bank.

Bankers and the Farm Credit System are back at it, lobbying Congress to gain a competitive edge.

Doing five deals in eight months is a lot for any bank to handle, so the $520 million-asset Bradford Bank in Baltimore borrowed a page from much larger rivals and created an in-house conversion team.

Once an active acquirer of Midwestern banks, Merchants and Manufacturers BanCorp. Inc. in New Berlin, Wis., has been idle on the deal front for two years, but its top executive plans to end the hiatus soon.

Larry E. Duckworth, the chief executive of OmniAmerican Bank in Fort Worth, died Thursday morning. He was 59.

Two deals were announced late Thursday for California banking companies - one in the San Francisco Bay Area and the other near Los Angeles.

Mercantile Bancorp Inc. in Quincy, Ill., announced Thursday that it had agreed to buy HNB Financial Services Inc. of Hannibal, Mo., for $30.2 million in cash.

The head of the Small Business Administration told Congress that more money is not what his embattled agency needs.

American Bank Holdings Inc. of Silver Spring, Md., announced Wednesday that it has reached an agreement to acquire Grange Bank, a $245 million-asset thrift in Columbus, Ohio.

Sun Bancorp Inc. in Vineland, N.J., has appointed Sidney R. Brown, the company's vice chairman, treasurer, and secretary, to be the acting president and chief executive officer.

TriState Capital Bank is an ambitious name for a start-up. But this two-week-old business bank is already setting records.

A small Georgia bank pummeled by internal fraud reported a $6.89 million fourth-quarter profit it attributed largely to a branch sell-off.