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Regional bank dealmaking heated up considerably in the second half of 2025. Comptroller Gould’s comments on the removal of artificial bank size regulatory heightened standards blew significant winds into regional banks’ sails, yielding, a wave of activity in that space that has not been present for many years. Scale, geographic diversification, and physical presence in attractive markets were the drivers of this large bank mergers. The regulatory step-back allowed market forces to prevail, and, with…

I wrote this article decades ago. When I reread it recently it reaffirmed that, the more things seem different, the more they are the same. “We have fought for years to keep our customers out of the branch; now we are fighting to get them back in so we can sell the, a variety of products and services,“ says one community banker, echoing the feelings of many others. But what do the customers want? Is…