Emigrant Launches Web Bank

Citizens First Financial Corp. of Bloomington, Ill., announced Wednesday that an enforcement order under which it had been operating for nearly a year has been terminated.

The Sacramento area's torrid growth has helped Placer Sierra Bank more than double its assets in five years, to $1.5 billion. Now it aims to replicate that success in the nation's fastest-growing region, southern California's Inland Empire.

Valley National Bancorp's first deals in nearly four years have come in response to a growing competitive threat from more aggressive rivals, some analysts say.

After failing to buy back enough shares to go private, Wells Financial Corp. of Wells, Minn., plans to conduct a reverse stock split by the end of the quarter with a goal of getting its shareholder count below 300.

The private banking unit of Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc. says it plans to move beyond the city with a couple of acquisitions in New England this year.

Columbia University economics professor Charles Calomiris is well known in industry circles for his books on banking and as a member of Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, a group of academics who critique banking regulation.

QCR Holding Inc., of Moline, Ill., said Tuesday that it has launched Rockford Bank and Trust Co.

Many banks fail to take advantage of a great resource: nearby colleges and high schools.

Another small community bank has announced plans to deregister its stock, extending a trend that emerged after passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002.

Prompted by recent acquisitions in Texas and encouraged by rebounding crop values, Hibernia Corp. in New Orleans is ramping up its agricultural lending.

Six months after it began offering late-night hours at a Miami branch, BankAtlantic Bancorp of Fort Lauderdale has extended the service to four more branches.

Centrue Financial Corp. in Kankakee, Ill., closed 2004 with the announcement that it was buying a small bank in southern Illinois.

After failing to gain the necessary two-thirds vote from its members, a $1 billion-asset Grand Rapids credit union will not convert to a mutual savings bank.

City Holding Co. of Charleston, W.Va., has its first deal in more than five years, and its chief executive says it may not be done buying.

The president of a San Diego broker-dealer that opened last week said he believes he can generate up to $1.5 billion of assets under management this year by selling insurance and investment services through community banks.

As the chief executive of a banking company with just three branches and $136 million of assets, Mortimer J. O'Shea has to do a lot of things that executives of bigger ones never trouble themselves with.

A spate of banking laws that took effect New Year's Day include an Indiana predatory-lending law that exempts banks and could lead to similar statutes elsewhere.

Habersham Bancorp in Cornelia, Ga., announced a nonbonding agreement to buy a two-branch bank in nearby Toccoa.