BancorpSouth Inc.'s nearly 3-year hiatus from bank acquisitions officially ended Friday, when the Tupelo, Miss., company struck a pair of deals that would move it into the fast-growing markets of Baton Rouge, La., and Nashville.

Four months after saying that it would switch to a state charter, Trustmark National Bank of Jackson, Miss., has decided to keep the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as its regulator.

A tax-shelter crackdown by Wisconsin has banks headquartered there settling in droves, though a trade group insists they have done nothing wrong.

Ever since Kearny Financial Corp. made its first acquisition in 1999, the New Jersey company has been working to transform itself from a plain-vanilla thrift into a full-fledged community bank.

BancWest Corp. and Community First Bankshares Inc. of Fargo, N.D., expect the closing date of their acquisition deal to be moved back to the fourth quarter, because they are still waiting on regulatory approval.

QCR Holdings Inc. of Moline, Ill., plans to issue 260,000 shares to certain stockholders to help fund the creation of a banking subsidiary.

Sky Financial Group Inc. of Bowling Green, Ohio, has agreed to buy Prospect Bancshares of Worthington for $46.9 million in cash and stock.

As consumer brands go, BankPlus may not have the name recognition of DirecTV or Reebok, but the three companies share a celebrity spokesman: the New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

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Citizens Financial Group of Providence, R.I., has been ordered to change the name of its Citizens Bank in one western Pennsylvania county, because consumers are confusing it with a bank with a similar name.

When students ask me how to get into the world of banking, I often tell them, "Become a bank examiner."

Franklin Bank of Houston aims to be a major player in Texas by avoiding the hot urban markets being targeted by out-of-state giants.

People's Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., said Monday that its president and chief executive, John A. Klein, has undergone successful cancer surgery and is expected to return to work in early October.

Credit union industry lobbyists are not letting a Government Accountability Office report halt their campaign to ease what they call a looming capital crisis at many of the country’s best-run and fastest-growing credit unions.

The California Department of Financial Institutions is turning the tables on the famed Camels rating — it is asking bankers to rate its examiners on six indicators of performance.

Rurban Financial Corp. of Defiance, Ohio, has made the first dividend payment on its trust-preferred stock since entering into a regulatory agreement in July 2002.

The troubled North Country Financial Corp. of Manistique, Mich., said former chairman and chief executive Ronald G. Ford, who agreed in June to pay $500,000 to settle a class action, has resigned from its board.

Continuing its expansion in the Albany, N.Y., area, First Niagara Financial Group Inc. has acquired a Rensselaer lease-brokerage firm.

United Community Financial Corp. of Youngstown, Ohio, disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it added $1.04 million to its loss reserves for a bloc of 13 consumer loans with a value of $6 million that it classified as impaired after a recent portfolio review.