BankThink

Dodd-Frank Rollback, Pandit's Return, as JPM Turns

05/17/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Deriving Pleasure: Too many price quotes will increase trading costs and reduce liquidity. That is the curious (if not spurious) story megabanks successfully stuck to in lobbying financial regulators to water down a key provision of the Dodd-Frank Act aimed at governing derivatives trading. The result was a 4-to-1 vote by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday in favor of reducing the number of price quotes buyers must seek before conducting...

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GSE Critics Ignore Loan Performance

05/17/13

Loan performance data show the entire case against GSE underwriting standards, and their role in the financial crisis, is based on social stereotyping, smoke and mirrors, and little else.

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Want Tellers to Cross-Sell? Help Them Make a Quality Offer

05/16/13

Analyze data to tailor offers and draft sales pitches that customers, particularly those visiting branches, will have a hard time refusing.

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JPMorgan Gets an Information Edge Over Activist Shareholders

05/16/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Aw Mom, JPMorgan Again? Yes, kids, but today's meatloaf is spicy. Broadridge, the firm counting JPMorgan shareholder votes on the resolution to sever the CEO and chairman jobs, has stopped providing running tallies to the investors sponsoring the proposal, the Times reports. Broadridge says it did so at the behest of SIFMA, the Wall Street trade group, whose members are the firm's clients. SIFMA told the Times that "one of its working...

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Brown-Vitter Bill: A Capital Fix for Troubled Markets

05/16/13

The common-sense steps taken in the bill will help even the playing field between community banks and big financial firms.

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More Must Be Done to Promote Homeownership for All

05/15/13

The banking industry must create sustainable mortgage products that will work for responsible families of modest means. We also need a proactive homeownership policy from the federal government.

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Split Chairman and CEO Roles? It Depends

05/15/13

The heart of the issue is not who holds what titles, but whether a company’s governance processes are functioning as they should.

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When Dinosaurs Roamed the JPMorgan Boardroom; More Job Cuts at HSBC

05/15/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Sick of JPMorgan Yet? The Times' "Deal Professor," Steven Davidoff, calls the fight over the upcoming JPMorgan shareholder vote "silly." Though severing the chairman and CEO roles has improved governance at many companies, he writes, "not all companies are alike," and he finds the benefits of the independent-chair model for a large, complex bank dubious. "No study to my knowledge has ever found that companies that do such a split are better…

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The Best Chance for a Stable Mortgage Market

05/15/13

A modified version of Ed DeMarco’s securities-based model for housing finance reform could promote an active market for risk-sharing arrangements and further reduce systemic risk by distributing credit risk broadly.

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Common Sense Brings 'Fuzzy Science' of Ops Risk into Focus

05/14/13

Accept the limitations of quantification exercises. Management should focus on identifying and mitigating risks that alone or in combination could cause a bank to fail.

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