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North Valley Bancorp, a multi-bank holding company with $864 million in assets, has said that its wholly-owned subsidiary, North Valley Bank, will open loan production offices in Santa Rosa and Ukiah, California. The company will operate the new offices to facilitate the expansion of its lending products to the Northern San Francisco Bay area markets, according to a company press release. Both offices will open by the end of the year bringing the company's total number of offices to 23 branch offices and two loan production offices located in nine counties in Northern California. The Santa Rosa and Ukiah loan production offices will be actively engaged in business lending, real estate development loans, and commercial real estate financing opportunities, the release said;

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is appealing to the more than seven million Filipinos overseas to remit at least $20 every month to their relatives back home to help shore up the country's gross international reserves and keep the economy afloat. Speaking at a cocktail reception with members of the Filipino community at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Burlingame recently, Macapagal-Arroyo said the dollar remittances of overseas Filipinos play a major role in keeping domestic economy from sliding down. "This is a big contribution not only to your families but also for every Filipino," she said, encouraging overseas Filipinos to make additional efforts "to overcome the massive challenges the country is facing." According to sources, of the total remittances of almost $8 billion from Filipinos abroad last year, more than $4.1 billion came from Filipinos in the US;

Bank of America Corp. has said it will increase spending on its European operations by 20% next year, Reuters has reported, citing a senior executive's interview in the French daily newspaper, La Tribune."Europe - particularly France, Germany, and Italy - constitutes a priority-growth area," said William Fall, head of BofA's international activities. BofA has said it plans to add 40 business bankers to the 135 working in the EU, with the aim of raising the staff to 300. All told La Tribune the bank increased spending on its European operations by 15% this year, Reuters reported.

Immigrants from the Dominican Republic will send home $2.7 billion in remittances in 2004, making the country the fourth largest remittance market in Latin America and the Caribbean after Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, reports the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). In a recent statement, the IDB said a new joint study conducted by its Multilateral Investment Fund and Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York found that $1.6 billion of those remittances - the money that migrants send back to their home countries - will be transferred from the US. The Earth Institute is an academic center that uses science and technology to advance sustainable development among the world's poor.  A majority of the Dominicans in the US live in the greater New York metropolitan area, source of nearly $1 billion a year in remittances to the country, the IDB said in the study called, "Sending Money Home - Remittance Recipients in the Dominican Republic and Remittance Senders from the US." Currently, remittances amount to the equivalent of a full 5% of the Dominican Republic's gross domestic product, the IDB said.

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