Gulf Coast bankers and at least two prominent lawmakers want Congress to give the Small Business Administration billions of dollars of special funding authority it could use to guarantee long-term, low-cost bank loans in the Katrina-ravaged region.

For 33 years Chevis Swetman has had a two-mile commute to his job at Peoples Bank in Biloxi, Miss. But since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast two weeks ago, his commute has become even shorter - a 10-foot walk down a hallway.

Community banks have long had a reputation of delivering better service than their big-bank counterparts, but small-business owners say that the customer-service gap is narrowing.

Prudential Investments of Newark, N.J., which has been offering managed account services to midsize banks since mid-2004, will start going after smaller banks next year.

MIDDLE ATLANTIC

Cathay General Bancorp in Los Angeles has entered into option agreements to buy a 41% stake in the $307 million-asset Great Eastern Bank in New York City for about $28.4 million.

Hurricane Katrina did not drop much rain on the Plains states, but farmers there are feeling the storm’s aftereffects.

After going nearly three years without making an acquisition, First State Bancorp of Albuquerque has announced two deals in less than a week.

New Collateral Rules Expected to Boost Lending

Despite bankers’ repeated complaints about excessive regulation, many of them are actually doing more than is required of them in corporate governance.

Daryl G. Byrd, the president and chief executive of Iberiabank Corp. of Lafayette, La., said he expects Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and other cities near New Orleans to grow fast as families and businesses displaced by Hurricane Katrina begin to rebuild.

Whitney Holding Corp. of New Orleans has moved senior managers to Houston and started reopening branches in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina.

A pioneer of the super community banking structure, Financial Institutions Inc. in Warsaw, N.Y., is consolidating its four bank subsidiaries to cut costs and get a better grip on the internal-control and credit-quality problems that have dogged it for the past three years.

First State Bancorp in Albuquerque is buying the $374 million-asset Access Anytime Bancorp, also of Albuquerque, for about $30 million in stock. In addition to building itself in New Mexico, the $2 billion-asset First State would enter Arizona by acquiring Access Anytime, whose lone branch there is in the Phoenix suburb of Sun City.

Are federal regulators unfairly targeting south Florida community banks in their crackdown on money laundering?

Community bankers are keeping their fingers crossed that the Securities and Exchange Commission will give them an extra year to comply with the internal-controls provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

ABC Bancorp, a multibank holding company in Moultrie, Ga., plans to consolidate its 12 banks under a single charter and adopt a new name. The $1.3 billion-asset company said Wednesday that it has hired a marketing firm to help it create the name, which it plans to unveil next quarter. ABC estimates that the consolidation and rebranding will cost about $1.7 million.

MIDDLE ATLANTIC