On the advice of their auditors, many community banks have written down the value of their Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred stock because the stocks have fallen below their purchase prices and there is no telling when they might come back.

SEI Investments Inc. says it wants to increase market share and assets under advisement by developing outsourcing deals with community and small regional banks.

Peoples Financial Corp. in Biloxi, Miss., has revised its first-quarter earnings upward after receiving full payment of a $5.5 million loan that it had previously classified as impaired.

WASHINGTON - Rural America needs more capital to deal with poverty and a dwindling population.

The stock of C&F Financial Corp. of West Point, Va., rose sharply Friday after it announced it was buying back 180,000 - or 5.1% - of its shares at $41 each.

Firstbank Corp. of Alma, Mich., announced Thursday it that it had agreed to buy the 8-year-old Keystone Financial Corp. of Kalamazoo, Mich., for $26.6 million.

Six states have enacted tough data privacy measures in recent weeks and legal experts say that with others likely to follow, it may be time for Congress to create a national standard.

A one-month truce has been called in the fight for Independence Federal Savings Bank in Washington, but don’t expect management and the thrift’s largest shareholder to spend that time looking for a compromise solution.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., have reintroduced a regulatory-relief bill for credit unions that would revise their capital regulations and allow individual credit unions to make more business loans.

MIDWEST

For a small start-up, Great Florida Bank thinks big.

Independence Federal Savings Bank in Washington has postponed a shareholder vote to fill three board seats after the Office of Thrift Supervision raised concerns about "misleading" information being distributed by shareholder and community groups.

"Joe Lunchbucket" will soon have a bank in Columbus, Ohio.

Though they will probably never know it, low-income and unbanked consumers around the country may soon be helping a rapidly expanding community bank in McAllen, Tex., fund its growth.

FNB Corp. of Asheboro, N.C., has agreed to buy a $151 million-asset bank in Graham, N.C., for $24.6 million in cash and stock.

Washington Savings Bank's stock price plummeted Monday on news of credit-quality troubles at the $558 million-asset Bowie, Md., thrift. After the stock market closed Friday, Washington Savings announced it would take a $2.8 million charge for its fiscal third quarter, which ended April 30, to reflect an increase in its loan-loss provision.

WASHINGTON - On Good Hope Road in southeast Washington, a financial services education center run by the nonprofit Operation Hope Inc. opened just down the street from the Good Hope Marketplace.

First Bancorp in Troy, N.C., has formed a board-level executive search committee to find a successor to its 75-year-old president and chief executive officer, James H. "Jimmie" Garner.

In 2002, Appalachian Bancshares Inc. in Ellijay, Ga., started reclassifying some of the money in its transaction accounts as savings deposits - and immediately cut reserves by $3.5 million.