national-regional

Wall Street Journal

Has the presence of institutional investors caused this country's biggest banks to act as if they were a big monopoly? That's the question a group of economists asked in a paper. The scholars found banks will make their customers pay more in fees and offer less in interest on deposit certificates when institutional investors invest in competing banks. Consequently, the presence of the same investor from company to company can begin to make...

New York Times

Investment bankers the world over are salivating at the fee bonanza that would emerge from a potential Saudi Aramco IPO.

If it went public, Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil producer in Saudi Arabia, could generate a market value the equivalent of 12 Apples, or about $7 trillion. And that's based on a 2010 estimate. ...

Wall Street Journal

Is it a case of He Who Must Not Be Named? No, it's not Voldemort from the Harry Potter series. It's the Structured Equity Finance and Trading group at Bank of America, also known as SEFT. Why has the division been sent to the penalty box? Because regulators have stepped up the pace of investigations into the type of dividend-tax trades made by SEFT. Unnamed sources say regulators are looking into whether the...

Wall Street Journal

Bank stocks, measured by the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index, rose 35% in 2013, boosted by hope that then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke would raise interest rates, David Reilly writes in a short "Overheard" column. Then 2014 arrived and the waiting game began. The KBW index rose only 7% for the year, trailing the overall market's performance. Things got worse last year, as bank stocks lost 1.6% for the year. ...

How can your company avoid missteps? By engaging with your shareholders in a constructive way. Dialogue between companies and shareholders Â-- if approached in the right spirit Â-- can yield valuable strategic insights and positively impact financial performance.