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Morning Scan: Banks Team Up on Blockchain; Ex-Spies in Cybersecurity

09/16/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

United by the Blockchain: Nine of the world's largest banks are joining forces to bring blockchain technology into the financial services fold. Banks including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse will back a start-up called R3CEV with the goal of establishing protocols and standards for blockchain use. The consortium will also work to develop "a platform that could handle the billions of dollars worth of transactions that occur in the financial...

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Morning Scan: Preserving Wall Street Chats; Who's Afraid of the DOJ?

09/15/15

Not-So-Secret Chat: A new deal between New York's financial regulator and four big banks aims to preserve government access to the financial institutions' electronic communications. The deal comes ahead of the launch of Wall Street's long-awaited chat and messaging service Symphony, scheduled to roll out Tuesday. Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and Bank of New York Mellon will all keep copies of their communications via Symphony for seven years and stash duplicates of decryptionÂ...

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Morning Scan: Banks Near Swaps Deal; When Marketplace Loans Sour

09/14/15

Swaps Settlement Ahead: Twelve big banks plan to pay $1.9 billion to settle charges that they conspired to control the credit default swaps market during the run-up to the financial crisis, according to the papers. The New York Times maintains an air of mystery about the details of the pending settlement, opting not to name the banks involved. But the Los Angeles Times names names including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup and the FinancialÂ...

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Morning Scan: GE Capital's Sale Price for Truck Finance Business; To Bitcoin, or Not to Bitcoin?

09/11/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Keep On Truckin': General Electric will earn a pretty penny from the sale of its U.S. transportation finance business. Bank of Montreal's purchase price for the Irving, Texas-based GE unit will be based on the net earning assets balance at the deal's closing, plus a premium, according to Canada's Financial Post. All told, the price will be about $13 billion. Those terms were disclosed during a Thursday afternoon conference call with analysts....

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Women in Banking: Wall Street's 'Math Queen' and 'Oldest Woman'

09/10/15

Get a dose of hope from the W-20 and Afghan girls who code. And get a dose of inspiration too, as persistence pays off for Mary Callahan Erdoes, the 'Math Queen of Wall Street,' and likewise for Irene Bergman, the 'Oldest Woman on Wall Street.'

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The Quiet Crisis in Banks' Shareholder Value

09/10/15

Bank earnings may be on the up and up, but aging business models are still putting a drag on most financial institutions' performance.

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Morning Scan: Bitcoin Startup Attracts Bank Investors; Sam's Club to Accept Amex

09/10/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Links in the Chain: Citigroup's Citi Ventures, Capital One Financial, Visa and Fiserv are among the financial-services companies that have invested in the Bitcoin startup Chain Inc. Former American Express CEO Jim Robinson is also an investor. The Wall Street Journal said the financial-services industry doesn't want to use Bitcoin as currency. Rather, they view the blockchain technology as a possible way to replace the inefficient methods they now use to verify...

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Take It from a Millennial: Mortgage Lenders Need Us

09/09/15

Mortgage companies need the wisdom of millennial employees if they want to stand a chance with the growing consumer majority. HereÂ's how they can lure todayÂ's young people on board.

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Morning Scan: Regulators Launch JPM 'Steering' Probe; Buffett Stands Up for Moynihan

09/09/15

Receiving Wide Coverage

Support for Moynihan: Warren Buffett is standing up for Brian Moynihan. Bank of America's chairman and chief executive is facing a shareholder vote later this month that could strip him of his chairmanship. Some shareholders are angry that B of A's board reversed a corporate bylaw (which shareholders had approved), to give Moynihan the additional title. Not Buffett. In a CNBC interview on Tuesday, Buffett said the disagreement with shareholders is "no big...

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Morning Scan: B of A Fights Effort to Strip Moynihan; Bank Stocks Tank

09/08/15

Wall Street Journal

Bank of America is fighting back against the effort to strip CEO Brian Moynihan of his chairman title. The struggle between Moynihan and shareholder groups to keep the two roles separate isn't new; JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon mounted a successful defense in 2013.

What makes Moynihan's situation different is how B of A handled it. Activist investors, proxy advisory firms and institutional investors like the California Public Employees' Retirement System want to yank the...

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