Business

During last spring’s banking crisis, when a competing lender went under, New York Community Bank pounced, acquiring a big chunk of its business. Now, it is paying dearly for that decision.The pain stems largely from a weakening commercial real estate market that impelled NYCB — which operates more than 400 branches under brands including Flagstar Bank — to admit to mounting losses. In a piece of symmetry with last year’s crisis, the bank said its newfound size after the acquisition of Signature Bank, had accelerated its troubles by forcing it to keep more money on hand, crimping its profitability and prompting it to consider selling distressed assets sooner than it might have preferred.Over the past week, fears that such pressure could be too much for the bank to bear broke into the open, ...

Bell Media is ending multiple television newscasts and making other programming cuts after its parent company announced widespread layoffs and the sale of 45 of its 103 regional radio stations.News stations such as CTV and BNN Bloomberg would be affected immediately, according to an internal memo sent to Bell Media employees on Thursday.The memo, signed by Dave Daigle, vice-president of local TV, radio and Bell Media Studios, and Richard Gray, vice-president of news at Bell Media, said weekday noon newscasts at all CTV stations except Toronto would end.It is also scrapping its 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts on weekends at all CTV and CTV2 stations except Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.Daigle and Gray said "multi-skilled journalists" would replace news correspondent and technician teams reporti...