The Department of Justice is criticizing an appeals court ruling striking down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's single-director structure, saying the decision overstepped Supreme Court precedent.

From the election's policy implications for banking to deep analysis of the Wells Fargo scandal, here are some of our favorite stories of the year. Stay tuned for Part II.

A consumer's ability to afford to purchase a home fell to an eight-year low in the fourth quarter because of rapid price appreciation, moderate wage growth and the post-election increase in interest rates, according to Attom Data Solutions.

The management team at Barclays Plc, facing a U.S. demand that it pay up over mortgage misconduct from the financial crisis, dared prosecutors to sue. The Justice Department obliged.

The similarities between the mortgage crisis and subprime auto lending in 2016 are all too obvious, with constrained cash flows, defaults and investor losses all likely.

Deutsche Bank AG and Credit Suisse Group AG agreed to pay a combined $12.5 billion to resolve U.S. investigations into sales of the toxic debt that fueled the financial crisis, putting behind them a major dispute that undermined confidence in the banks and raised questions about their turnarounds.

The Federal Reserve has freed Cole Taylor Bank from an enforcement action two years after the Chicago bank was acquired by MB Financial.

Sussex Bancorp in Rockaway, N.J., has raised $15 million by selling fixed- to floating-rate subordinated notes to an institutional investor. It did not name the investor.

Regulators have warned about the dangers of high commercial real estate concentrations despite bankers' assertions that they are managing risk better than they did before the financial crisis. Still, CRE concerns could influence M&A and loan diversification in 2017.

With signs pointing to a possible rebound in de novo activity, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released a guide to potential organizers about the application process.

FirstBank in Lakewood, Colo., named the successors to its CEO and president, who are both retiring after holding those titles for 17 years.

Opposition is lining up against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s arbitration plan. A Republican-controlled Congress is expected to overturn a final rule even as industry groups file lawsuits to stop it from going into effect. Some attorneys think the arbitration rulemaking is already dead on arrival.

At a time when individual accountability at corporations is mounting, here is how compliance officers can detect and prevent fraud occurrences within their own firms.

Equity Bancshares in Wichita, Kan., has raised $35.4 million in a common stock offering and plans to use the proceeds to pay down a line of credit and support growth.

A new analysis from the Federal Reserve shows checks as one of the few noncash payment types to decline, while many others are on the rise.

Lenders should be braced for some potential headaches as oil-related bankruptcies are expected to continue at a steady clip in 2017 and various market and political forces could influence oil supplies and prices.

The overall pace of consolidation slowed this year, but the average deal value increased from 2015 as bigger banks continued to get back into mergers and acquisitions. Several of this year's sellers were banks that had been backed by private equity in search of growth or a post-crisis turnaround.

Had Wells Fargo simply complied with regulatory guidelines on multifactor authentication across all channels, there would have been substantially less fraud.

Castle Creek Capital has sold its entire stake in Heritage Commerce in San Jose, Calif.

First Midwest Bancorp in Itasca, Ill., has hired the former chief financial officer at Fulton Financial, about two weeks after he announced his resignation from the Lancaster, Pa., company.