Heritage has agreed to pay $44.2 million for Valley Community Bancshares in Puyallup, Wash., the holding company for the $242 million-asset Valley Bank, the companies announced Tuesday.

Sunrise Community Banks in St. Paul, Minn., plans to combine three bank charters.

Gulfstream Bancshares, a closely held Florida business lender with four branches and equity of about $66 million, has put itself up for sale, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

The most notable quotes from American Banker stories of the previous week. Readers are encouraged to add their own observations in the Comments fields at the bottom of each slide.

A breakdown of M&A announcements in the financial services industry for the week ended March 9.

FirstMerit (FMER) has hired a veteran banker to lead its operations in Wisconsin.

Michael Carrazza, a private equity investor who bailed out Patriot National Bancorp, is eager to make loans while searching for the optimal exit strategy.

As a veteran senior executive in the male-dominated banking industry, Terri Dial left a void that has yet to be filled a year after her death.

Florida bank-buyer Bond Street Holdings bulked up on failure deals, took a 19-month break and has returned to M&A with the aim of $5 billion in assets by yearend.

Hanmi Financial Corp's talks with rivals about a possible sale have stalled because of disagreements over price and management, said people with knowledge of the matter.

FactorTrust, a provider of underbanked consumer data, analytics and risk scoring solutions on consumers underserved by traditional banking channels, announced Monday a joint initiative with FICO.

Signature Bank in New York has hired eight bankers from Citigroup to run two private client banking teams.

Bank of the West in San Francisco is making a middle-market commercial lending push.

Nationstar Mortgage Holdings was ordered to stop auctioning some home loans backing mortgage securities after an investor sued.

U.S. private-equity investors Wilbur Ross and J. Christopher Flowers are lining up to finance British homebuyers as the country's biggest banks pull back.

Costly due diligence and the heavy demands of institutional investors still make it difficult for aspiring acquirers to pull the trigger on bank M&A.

BankUnited in Miami Lakes, Fla., has priced a planned secondary offering by its biggest investors.

Union First Market Bankshares in Richmond, Va., has repurchased a large block of common stock from one of its largest investors.

Citigroup (NYSE:C) has asked the Federal Reserve to authorize a $1.2 billion share buyback program this year, in a bid to prove it has recovered from the financial crisis and improved its operations in the past year.

The merger of NBT Bancorp (NBT) and Alliance Financial Group (ALNC) is nearly official.