11/20/2019
The mergers and acquisitions (M&A) train that left the station in 2018, fueled by things like tax reform, interest rates inching up, and FI-friendly regulation keeps on chugging along. American Banker reports that the pace of M&A slowed slightly in 2019, but even so, more than 180 mergers were announced as of the end of…
07/02/2019
There’s a decent chance we’ll look back at the first half of 2019 as the period when the US payments landscape changed permanently. The chain of events began in January with Fiserv’s surprise announcement that it was acquiring First Data in a $22 billion merger. Speculation quickly followed on how other leading financial services technology…
04/23/2019
Recently, we noticed a trend of credit unions purchasing community banks and were curious about why this was happening. Research from Filene Research Institute confirmed the trend and shared insights about why credit unions are doing this, if we should expect to see more, and if community banks should consider looking at acquiring credit unions….
04/26/2018
In agriculture, there’s no question that success rests on the weather, the markets and access to capital. If one of these factors comes up short, producers struggle to cover expenses and make a profit. For the past five years, producers everywhere have struggled to make up for down markets in both corn and soybeans. Corn…
04/18/2018
When farmers struggle to make ends meet, the first step is to lower costs. It’s a simple matter of business sense and survival. In 2013, farm income peaked. Since then, a dramatic drop in commodity prices has brought the net farm income forecast down to just over half of what it was five years ago….
06/04/2014
It’s no secret that smaller financial institutions have been trying to grow larger through mergers, acquisitions and alliances. Whether this is due to changes in the regulatory environment, the desire to gain access to new markets, technology and products or simply to achieve growth, the trend has been toward the idea that bigger is better. Bank…