A court deadline this week and the failure of two of Capitol's banks last week have added to the Lansing, Mich., company's increasingly tense bankruptcy.

First Merchants in Muncie, Ind., was looking to get closer — but not too close — to the Chicago market when it agreed to buy CFS Bancorp of Munster, Ind.

Financial journalists sometimes refer to M&A bankers as "rainmakers." Do they make it rain, or do they just take credit when it starts raining?

Old Line Bancshares in Bowie, Md., has appointed Mark Semanie as its chief operating officer to help manage its recent growth.

The Chicago-area company has started financing employee stock-ownership plans as a way to eke more business out of commercial clients.

Regions Financial has wrapped up a tender offer to lower its debt expense. The company said Monday that it plans to retire $350 million worth of 2014 bonds on which it pays a 7.75% interest rate.

First Merchants is buying CFS Bancorp in a deal that would create a $5.6 billion-asset Indiana bank.

Foreclosure activity dropped in April to the lowest level in more than six years, another sign the recovery in the housing market is on track, a report from RealtyTrac showed on Thursday.

Regulators on Friday seized two banks owned by the $1.6 billion-asset company. The failures could tangle the Lansing, Mich., company in what the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. calls the cross-guarantee liability, meaning that the agency has the ability to charge Capitol's nine surviving banks with the cost of the failures.

A North Carolina bank that had belonged to the long-troubled Capitol Bancorp was closed by state regulators on Friday.

Customers Bancorp in Wyomissing, Pa., is looking to raise $75 million in a stock sale and intends to use the proceeds to fund organic growth and acquisitions.

After a relatively busy April, the number of critically undercapitalized banks is down to just a handful. The pool of failure candidates could increase, but buyers should start looking elsewhere, industry observers say.

Two shareholders of MainStreet Bank (MNSB), in Herndon, Va., have reportedly asked investors to push for a sale of the $271 million-asset company.

Debt buyer Encore Capital Group Inc. announced first quarter results, including a 17% jump in gross collections from portfolio purchasing and recoveries.

A real estate arm of KeyCorp has agreed to purchase more than $100 billion of servicing rights on commercial and multifamily loans from Bank of America, Keycorp said in a press release Thursday.

Royal Bank of Scotland CFO Bruce Van Saun will replace Ellen Alemany as CEO of its U.S. business. He is preparing Citizens Financial for a partial IPO by 2015, though he said in an interview that he is open to "attractive" takeover offers.

First Citizens Bancshares (FCNCA) in Raleigh, N.C., reported a large increase in its quarterly earnings after the sale of a large portion of its processing-servicing business.

Executives from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and ING U.S. were among the honorees at an annual awards ceremony hosted by Legal Momentum, a women's legal defense and education fund.

Look up in the sky! It's a bird. It's a plane. No, Regions Financial is adding two supersized signs to the Music City skyline.

A former loan officer at Wilmington Trust in Delaware is facing jail time after pleading guilty this week to bank fraud.