Paul Davis

The heads of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., PNC Financial Services Group Inc. and other banking companies said added fees, investments in businesses unrelated to lending and smaller client bases will offset the toll of reform expenses and tepid lending.

Several banks are actively looking to expand in the Georgia capital, viewing it as a market that will inevitably rebound from its malaise of the past three years.

Bank of America raised almost all the same questions as its fellow megabanks did last week and got no closer to resolving them.

Bank securities held by the Treasury Department through the Troubled Asset Relief Program would no longer count toward a banking company's Tier 1 capital under the Senate's version of the reform bill, legal experts said.

Though the reform bill wending its way through Congress will have little direct impact on regional banks' capital markets business, it could spur more competition from larger rivals.

While all of the big banks have repurchased or converted preferred stock, and two-thirds of the regionals have followed suit, community banks are expected to hold the vast majority of unpaid Tarp funds on their balance sheets by the program's two-year anniversary.