West Bancorporation Inc., parent company of West Bank and WB Capital Management Inc., said Wednesday that it received $36 million through the U. S. Department of the Treasury’s Capital Purchase Program. The Treasury Department bought 36,000 shares of West Bancorporation’s newly issued cumulative preferred stock and a 10-year warrant that allows purchase of up to 474,100 shares of new common stock at an initial exercise price of $11.39. West Bancorporation will use the money to increase the capital at West Bank and retire debt. West Bank intends to use the additional capital for lending and general corporate purposes.

Lee Enterprises Inc. said Wednesday it has fallen below the New York Stock Exchange’s standards for listing, but the company will notify the exchange of plans to return to compliance, according to media reports. The Davenport-based publisher of 49 daily newspapers said it has failed to maintain the exchange’s requirement of a minimum average closing price of $1 per share over a consecutive 30-day trading period. Lee shares haven’t traded above $1 since Dec. 2. Shares have traded in a 52-week range of 30 cents to $14.91. Lee said in a statement it plans to notify the exchange within 10 business days of its plans to return to compliance.

Fitch Ratings today affirmed its issuer default ratings today for Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. as they completed acquisitions of Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and Wachovia Corp., respectively. Bank of America “enhances (its) global franchise with Merrill buy,” wrote Fitch. It affirmed Bank of America’s AA- rating. Wells Fargo’s purchase of Wachovia “cements (a) national franchise,” said Fitch, which affirmed its AA rating for Wells Fargo. Fitch added that Wells Fargo “has effectively doubled its franchise through the acquisition of Wachovia.”

With no initial public offerings (IPOs) and just $3.9 billion generated via mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of 65 venture-backed companies in the fourth quarter, 2008 proved to be the worst year in terms of liquidity for U.S. venture capitalists since the post-tech-bust doldrums of 2003, according to statistics released today by Dow Jones VentureSource. Overall, U.S. venture-backed companies generated $24.1 billion in liquidity through IPOs and M&As in 2008, down 58 percent from the $57.6 billion in liquidity produced in 2007. After peaking in 2007 at a seven-year high of $50.9 billion, liquidity generated through the sale of venture-backed companies fell 54 percent to $23.5 billion in 2008. According to the statistics, only 325 venture-backed companies merged or were acquired in 2008, the lowest number of since 1999, and down 29 percent from the 457 companies sold in 2007.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said today that it has imposed a $1 million fine against E*Trade Securities LLC and E*Trade Clearing LLC for failing to establish and implement anti-money-laundering policies and procedures that could reasonably be expected to detect and cause the reporting of suspicious securities transactions. The authority found that between Jan. 1, 2003, and May 31, 2007, E*Trade did not have separate and distinct monitoring procedures for suspicious trading activity in the absence of money movement. The firm relied on its analysts and other employees to manually monitor for and detect suspicious trading activity without providing them with sufficient automated tools. E*Trade neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of the financial authority’s findings.