Regional banks

WesBanco in Wheeling, West Virginia, has hired a team of lenders in South Florida. It plans eventually to open branches in a bid to grab a share of the region's expanding deposit market.

Darnell returns to Regions, after fintech-focused stints at Visa and a community bank acquired by Huntington, as the bank accelerates its branch opening plans.

Morgan Stanley wants to get into crypto, and Kraken is getting inside the Fed. Plus Banco Santander faces a dilemma, and prediction markets make some questionable bets.

Banks that have more than $50 billion of assets but are smaller than the megabanks scored the lowest on customer satisfaction, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index's 2026 finance study. The industry's overall score remained stable.

The Ohio bank said its 2027 earnings per share will be lower due to an accounting revision linked to its acquisition of Cadence Bank. But CEO Steve Steinour remains sold on Huntington's expansion plans, calling the Cadence deal a "home run transaction."

Unlike some of its expansion-minded regional bank peers, Montana-based First Interstate is reconfiguring its business model to be smaller and more focused on relationship banking. The blueprint is the work of CEO Jim Reuter, who joined the bank 15 months ago.

Though fourth-quarter net charge-offs reached a level not seen since the financial crisis, the Little Rock, Arkansas-based regional bank is forecasting better results in 2026 and an even stronger recovery in 2027.

During the fourth quarter, the Buffalo, New York-based bank reported its lowest ratio of nonperforming loans to total loans since 2007.

David Turner has overseen Regions' finance function since 2010. The Birmingham, Alabama-based company tapped Controller Anil Chadha to replace him.

The Birmingham-based lender is opening its first branch in Houston, following a wave of banks rushing into the Lone Star State as its economy continues to boom.

The $22.7 billion-asset company may be interested in buying certain banks that HoldCo Asset Management presses to sell in the future, Chairman and CEO John Allison said. Home is planning to announce its next acquisition in December.

The West Reading-based bank has opened three offices in California and two in Nevada, continuing its strategy of establishing a presence in high-growth markets around the country, CEO Sam Sidhu said.

Financial literacy advocate John Hope Bryant has joined with a Los Angeles-based developer in an effort to raise up to $300 million from banks to preserve and construct low-income housing around the country.

The Arkansas-based company spent nearly four years on the M&A sidelines, grappling with asset quality issues and litigation tied to its 2022 acquisition of Texas-based Happy State Bank. Now it's signed a letter of intent to buy an unnamed bank.

The Richmond, Virginia-based bank expects to build 10 branches in Raleigh and Wilmington, North Carolina, over the next three years. M&A is on the back burner as the company also works to capitalize on its recent acquisition of Sandy Spring Bank in Maryland, CEO John Asbury said.

The CEOs of Pinnacle Financial Partners and Synovus Financial — two banks that recently announced a deal to join forces — say they've ironed out all the critical sticking points that bedeviled previous mergers of equals.

The Ohio-based bank opened its first branch in Alabama, with plans to open 14 more over the next three years.

Growing loans was a tall order in 2024, but banks that could do just that were able to outperform their peers.

The Columbus, Ohio-based regional bank also benefited from strong performances by several legacy business lines, including auto, mortgages and SBA lending.

The regional bank's cloud-based software platform will be one of the first of its kind, a top executive said Friday.