Porterville, Calif.-based Finance and Thrift has agreed to buy Pan American Bank in Los Angeles in an all-stock deal, rescuing California's oldest Latino bank. Finance and Thrift will adopt the Pan American name. The deal completes last summer's effort by 17 community banks that invested a total of $6.3 million in Pan American to ward off regulators ready to seize it. Robert Hughes, CEO of Finance and Thrift, will run the merged bank and maintain the banks' commitment to lending in blue-collar hispanic communities, using a data-driven approach to lend to underserved borrowers with sparse credit histories. As a first step, the merged bank will open a branch to serve working-class Latinos in the northern San Fernando Valley.