Bank of North Carolina in Thomasville, N.C., announced Thursday that it is buying Regent Bank in Greenville, S.C., for $9.8 million.

The paperless document storage provider Doxo has signed up Sound Community Bank. Sound, of Seattle, will let customers receive all communications in Doxo's online file cabinet.

Cullen/Frost CEO Dick Evans, whose company dominates its home base of San Antonio, tells American Banker about his strategies for maintaining that market share, dealing with new regulations, and looking for acquisition targets.

Sudden pessimism over the economy has flattened interest rates, and revived refinancing volume and mortgage production margins.

Whitney's sale to Hancock put it in direct battlegrounds for business with Iberiabank.

Equity Bank in Andover, Kan., is bulking up in its home state with deals to acquire a small bank in Lawrence and four branches in Topeka from a Missouri bank that is exiting the market.

AmericanWest Bank has struck its third deal this year, this time forViking Financial Services Corp. in Seattle.

The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced a written agreement with Stonebridge Financial Corp. in West Chester, Pa.

In an effort build scale and improve efficiency, Haverhill Bank in Massachusetts has struck a deal to merge with Economy Co-operative Bank in Merrimac.

Fast-growing Signature Bank in New York announced Thursday that it has opened a new office in Manhattan and recruited a team of bankers from HSBC USA to join one of its private-client banking offices in Queens.

Heritage Oaks Bancorp in Paso Robles, Calif., has named longtime California banking executive Simone Lagomarsino as its new president and chief executive officer and as CEO of its subsidiary, Heritage Oaks Bank.

Foreclosures continue to decimate communities around the nation, with black neighborhoods being the hardest hit. Some pundits and politicians point to federal policies that encouraged homeownership in low- and moderate-income communities, coupled with reckless behavior on the part of greedy homeowners, as the crux of the problem. One example is the statement by Fox News reporter Neil Cavuto that "loaning to minorities and risky borrowers is a disaster." To the contrary, our recent research demonstrates that it is outside investors living in other, predominantly white neighborhoods, not local homeowners, who account for the adverse impact on our nation's black communities.

Capitol Federal Financial Inc. in Topeka, Kan., has decided to wait until its one-year anniversary as a 100% stock-owned company before before pursuing a stock buyback program.

The Treasury Department said this week it will distribute $4.3 billion from the Small Business Lending Fund, about a third of the funds that banks were seeking from the program and only 14% of the total available.

BlueRidge Bank in Frederick, Md., is expanding its operations in the Baltimore metropolitan area by converting its year-old commercial loan office there into a full-service branch.

A ranking of midsize banking companies by funding rates in which SVB Financial places first and First BanCorp places last puts different business models, and local economic conditions, in full view.

For CrossFirst, the last three years have been filled with perseverance. It spent three years trying to raise capital and 13 months cleaning up a troubled bank before regulators would allow it to merge it with its de novo bank.

Associated Banc-Corp in Green Bay, Wis., plans to raise more than $200 million in fresh capital and will use the proceeds to repay the balance of its debt to the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Banks with assets of less than $10 billion are exempt from the Dodd-Frank Act's restrictions on debit interchange, but even those who are exempt from the law are still bracing for what they see as its inevitable effects on their checking accounts and other operations.

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