Bank acquisitions, which slowed a bit after the Wells, Wachovia, and Citi dance are now back in force. PNC Corp. announced today that it was buying National City for approximately $5.2 billion. In 2007, National City had $150 billion dollars in assets and was one of largest financial companies in the United States. In the past year, National City's stock has taken a tremendous beating falling from a 52 week high of $24 to $2. It displayed many of the sympoms we've seen of many distressed bank - dividend cuts, capital raises, cratering stock price, and suddenly high interest rates on cds and savings accounts. National City suffered from a bad loan portfolio in Ohio, a state that has been hard hit by foreclosures. To make matters worse, National City recently spent $2.1 billion buying up banks in Florida, one of the hearts of the housing meltdown.

PNC is significantly healthier. While its stock price has fallen from a 52 week high of 89, it is now trading at 59. That's hardly the collapse we've seen with distressed banks. PNC is also tapping the TARP Capital Purchase Program and plans to sell $7.7 billion of preferred stock to the U.S. Treasury to help with the deal.

The FDIC must be breathing a bit easier since that removes National City from its radar of potential failed banks.

The WSJ stepped into the high yield online savings world with an article on transfer times using online banks. There wasn't a lot of new information but it was a decent recap of why it takes 2-4 days to process a transfer.

The Journal article describes this process of someone sending a transfer from an online svings account to their online checking account. at a different bank:

"What happens during that time? ING sends transactions in batches during the day to an automated clearinghouse, which sorts them and moves them to the receiving bank in a matter of two to four hours, according to Arkadi Kuhlmann, chief executive officer of ING Direct USA, a unit of ING Groep NV, and Elliott C. McEntee, chief executive of Nacha, the Electronic Payments Association, a not-for-profit group that oversees the automated clearinghouses.

In many cases, the receiving bank gets the transfer the same day. Under rules established by Nacha, money that moves on Monday should be available by the end of Tuesday. If the transfer slips to early Tuesday morning, the money should be available first thing Wednesday morning."

Banks then wait another day or two to ensure that the funds are good and have cleared. According to the article, depositing money into an online account took even longer- 5 business days, as ING wanted to make sure the funds were good.

Here are some tips for speeding up the transfer process:

• Plan ahead if you know you need the money.
• See if your money market account ccount has check-writing privileges. Paper checks can actually clear faster than electronic transfers.
• Compain if the transfer takes more than 2 business days to receive money you "pushed" from another bank. NACHA, the organization thatruns the ACH system can levy fines on banks if they hold your money for too long.

The article states that Europe has a faster transfer system and that enhancements to speed up the transfer process are under development. That's good news for consumers. In the meantime, if you've done a transfer and it takes more than 2 business days, call your bank and complain.

So, if you need your funds from an online account, plan ahead.

ING Direct has bucked the prevailing wisdom like many other banks and raised the rates on severa of its certificate of deposit terms and its Electric Orange Savings Account. While the market is still assigning a greater than 50% probability that the Fed will cut rates again after its emergency cut of 50 basis points (half a percentage point) two weeks ago, banks have mostly held their rates steady or have even increased them. This analysis shows that savings account yields have actually held up relatively well as the market and economy has fallen apart.

That trend seems to be continuing. ING Direct raised the rates on its 12 month CD and its 18 month CD by 25 basis points (quarter of a percentage point) making them more competitive. It also raised the rate on the top tier (above $100,000 in balances) of its Electric Orange Account.

The parent company of ING Direct, ING was recently bailed out by the Dutch goverment to the tune of $13 billion. ING has major insurance and commercial banking operations. The retail bank has $338 billion euros in savings and current-account deposits at the end of last year, making it one of the world’s largest retail banks.