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Cracking the Glass Ceiling: Advice for Women in Banking

05/27/15

Women in banking are making big strides Â-- but there's still a long way to go before achieving gender parity at the executive level. Here's how up-and-comers can carve out a path to the top.

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Morning Scan: IRS Admits Crooks Steal Customer Info; Libor 'Ringmaster' Goes on Trial

05/27/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Cracking the Tax Code: The taxman is the latest victim of identity theft. The Internal Revenue Service said hackers stole tax-return information for about 100,000 U.S. households, including Social Security numbers. The thieves used the IRS's own online services to penetrate its databases, cracking the code of multistep authentication processes. Interestingly, the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, said the incident was "not a hack or data breach. These are imposters pretending to be...

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Morning Scan: Tributes to Game Theory Pioneer John Nash; Bank Stocks to Rise?

05/26/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ... A Beautiful Mind: Tributes to John Nash were plentiful after the mathematician made famous by his depiction in the film "A Beautiful Mind" was killed in an taxi accident this weekend. Nash's doctoral thesis placed game theory, the study of strategic interactions, at the heart of economics, the Financial Times said. After Nash's insights, "economists stopped thinking exclusively about unrealistic models of perfectly competitive markets and began focusing on cases in whichÂ...

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Morning Scan: Criminal Pleas No Longer Scary; Will Shelby Bill Beat the Odds?

05/22/15

Editor's note: Morning Scan will not publish on Monday, May 25 in observance of the Memorial Day holiday. We'll be back on Tuesday, May 26. Receiving Wide Coverage ...

What's Next for the Shelby Bill: The Senate Banking Committee approved Sen. Richard Shelby's proposed regulatory reform bill Thursday, but Senate Republicans will need to reach across the aisle to get the legislation to pass. Their chances of gaining bipartisan support for the bill vary widely in news...

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Morning Scan: Lawsky's Next Act; Will Forex Fines Deter Bad Behavior?

05/21/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Forex Fines: The unethical attitudes that gave rise to the forex scandal might be summed up by this revealing 2010 chat message from a Barclays trader: "If you aint cheating, you aint trying." This noteworthy tidbit accompanied the news that six big banks have agreed to pay more than $5.8 billion to settle allegations related to foreign-exchange rate-rigging. Four of the sixÂ--Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of ScotlandÂ--are also pleading...

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Morning Scan: UBS Fined for Rate-Rigging; Top Threats to Financial System

05/20/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ... UBS Pays Up: Immunity didn't quite work out for UBS. The Swiss lender has agreed to pay $545 million to settle investigations into the alleged manipulation of foreign-exchange and Libor rates. UBS had reached a nonprosecution agreement with the U.S. back in 2012 over its alleged role in the Libor scandal, but prosecutors scrapped the deal when the bank later became implicated in forex rigging. Now it will plead guilty to oneÂ...

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Morning Scan: What Shelby's Bill Means for QM; Wall Street Same as It Ever Was?

05/19/15

Wall Street Journal

Ocwen Financial has put things right with the New York Stock Exchange after filing its annual report for 2014 last week. The NYSE had previously threatened to kick the troubled mortgage-servicing firm off the exchange for failing to comply with its listing standards. Now there's a new bullet for Ocwen to dodge: the firm said Monday it is working with lenders to adjust its debt arrangements in order to avoid liquidity problems. ...

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What Does Good Customer Service Look Like? Most Banks Haven't a Clue

05/18/15

All banks truly believe they provide spectacular, top-notch service. But the vast majority hover close to mediocre and lack the metrics to identify areas for improvement.

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Sorry, Jamie Dimon: Bigger Always Means Riskier

05/18/15

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon defended his institution by arguing that size isn't necessarily an indicator of risk. But the truth is that the larger an organization gets, the more complex it becomes-and the more difficult it is for leaders to keep everything from customer service to fraud prevention working the way it should.

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Morning Scan: Big Banks Step Up Small-Business Loans; Why 'Say on Pay' Fizzles

05/18/15

Wall Street Journal

It's hard to let go of a juicy bonus Â-- even if your former employer famously went down in the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. The paper reports former hotshot Lehman Brothers trader Jonathan Hoffman is demanding $83 million in unpaid bonuses from the Lehman bankruptcy trustee. The estate, on the other hand, says Hoffman already got his cash courtesy of Barclays, which bought some Lehman assets and hired him after the company's...

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