Melissa Allison

Suspicious activity reports, those nebulous forms that bankers file with the government when they suspect customers of criminal activity, have mushroomed. About 120,500 suspicious activity reports were filed in 1999,...

Good riddance, 2000. The long-running, record-setting bull market lurched and sputtered before finally limping to the finish line after its most volatile year in history. Following nearly a decade of...

The failure of National State Bank came as a shock to the city of Metropolis, Ill. The 7,000 people who live there had good reason to believe their hometown bank...

Firstar Corp., the Milwaukee banking company that plans to acquire Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, is under attack from Chicagoans on two fronts. Community development activists are assailing its lending record in...

A national fight against predatory lending is gathering steam. The Federal Reserve is expected to present recommendations this week on how to curb abusive mortgage lending practices. Lending abuses--and definitions...

Howard Adams, who was ousted in 1998 as chairman and chief executive of Lake Forest-based Wintrust Financial Corp., a company he founded, is making a banking comeback in the Loop....

U.S. consumers' romance with plastic will reach new heights this holiday season, with estimates that they will charge an estimated $113.7 billion to their Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover...

A little more than a week after Kenneth Stevens announced his resignation from a high-ranking position at Bank One Corp., he landed as president and chief operating officer of Ohio's...

After months of internal debate, Bank of America Corp. decided last week to sign a pledge to the City of Chicago that it will not make loans the city considers...

People who fear the evil head of rising inflation could receive succor Thursday, when the producer price index is expected to show a tiny increase--0.1 percent overall, economists predict--from September's...