An investor group looking to oust Republic First Bancorp CEO Vernon Hill has offered to buy a majority stake in the Philadelphia company.The group, which includes George Norcross III and Gregory Braca, said in a regulatory filing that they sent a nonbinding proposal to Republic First’s investment bank. The offer includes an initial direct investment of $50 million that would involve the group buying newly issued nonvoting preferred stock followed by a

VyStar Credit Union in Jacksonville, Fla., and Heritage Southeast Bank in Jonesboro, Ga., have agreed to extend the deadline for their merger for a second time. The $11 billion-asset VyStar and the $1.6 billion-asset Heritage Southeast have pushed the deadline for their deal to March 31. The financial institutions announced in October that the deadline had moved from Dec. 31 to Feb. 28. The deal was announced in March 2021. If completed, it

Horizon Bancorp in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., has agreed to sell its bank to Arizona Federal Credit Union in Phoenix.The $2.8 billion-asset Arizona Federal plans to buy the $540 million-asset Horizon Community Bank for $91.4 million in cash. Arizona Federal also agreed to cover a portion of Horizon Community’s expected federal income tax liability tied to the sale of its assets in the transaction. The acquisition is expected to close by

Major League Soccer will borrow $25 million from a group of Black-owned banks. The league said in a press release Thursday that the lending group includes Carver Bancorp in New York and Citizens Trust Bank in Atlanta. The loan was facilitated by the National Black Bank Foundation (NBBF), a nonprofit. "Major League Soccer’s partnership with the National Black Bank Foundation is a tangible step in the efforts to close the racial economic

BOK Financial in Tulsa, Okla., has recorded $50 million of pretax losses to reduce the carrying value of certain trading securities. The $50.2 billion-asset company said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that the losses have been recorded since March 4. Most of the recorded losses are unrealized; they could fluctuate over the rest of the first quarter. BOK Financial pointed to recent events, including expected action by the Federal Reserve to combat

Three more banks have joined a group dedicated to blockchain initiatives. Amerant Bancorp in Coral Gables, Fla.; ConnectOne Bancorp in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.; and Primis Financial in McLean, Va., have joined the USDF Consortium in San Francisco. The consortium said it will move to a tier-based participation model while eliminating the minimum $1 billion-asset threshold for joining. The group also hired Piper Sandler to help it develop a pipeline of interested banks. The

Bank of New York Mellon will have a new CEO this summer.The $444 billion-asset company said in a press release Thursday that Todd Gibbons will retire on Aug. 31. Robin Vince, the company's chairman and CEO of global market infrastructure, has been named president and CEO-elect and will succeed Gibbons following his retirement.Gibbons, who will also step down from the board, has been CEO since September 2019.  Before joining Bank of

A loan dispute is seemingly at the root of a director’s abrupt resignation at BayFirst Financial in St. Petersburg, Fla. The $917 million-asset company disclosed in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it asked Trifon Houvardas to step down. He resigned on March 4. BayFirst said, prior to his resignation, Houvardas had guaranteed a loan to a bank borrower. The borrower defaulted on the payments due on the loan and, at BayFirst’s request,