Will the new capital requirements of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation kill small banks across the country?  Some sure seems to think so: 

Emmett Daly, a Sandler O'Neill dealmaker who specializes in small banks, predicted at an industry conference put on by Mergermarket on Thursday that the number of banks in the U.S. would shrink to a few hundred. There are currently more than 7,000. Bill Egan, head of financial institutions investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, agreed, but said the weeding out process was likely to take more than a decade.
Indeed, the deal this week to buy bank adviser KBW by rival larger rival Stifel Financial appeared to be motivated by the belief that more banks would have to make deals. Says Rochdale Securities bank analyst Dick Bove, "It's fairly clear that 50% of the banks in the U.S. need to be recapitalized."