national-regional

Morning Scan: Wells Fargo Caps Subprime Auto Lending; Holder's Deadline

03/02/15

Wall Street Journal

The Dodd-Frank restriction on the Federal Reserve's authority to be a lender of last resort poses a threat to financial stability, Glenn Hubbard, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, and Hal Scott, a Harvard Law School professor, write in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Restrictions on federal guarantees for bank deposits and money market funds also contribute to the threat. The Fed's lender-of-last-resort authority...

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Morning Scan: CIT, OneWest Deal in Public Eye; Winters Cheered as Standard CEO

02/27/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

CIT, Censures and Selfies: Bank chiefs don't often find themselves defending their business decisions to community members in a public hearing, but then again the $3.4 billion proposed merger between CIT Group and OneWest is a pretty big deal in more ways than one. CIT chief executive John Thain and OneWest CEO Joseph Otting told a panel of banking regulators in Los Angeles Thursday that their plan to create a $70 billion...

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Morning Scan: Yellen Confronts Partisan Charges; Is Lending Club Overrated?

02/26/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Morgan Stanley Strikes Deal with DOJ: Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay $2.6 billion to settle charges that it misled investors about the quality of mortgage-backed securities during the run-up to the financial crisis. The deal will make a significant dent in the bank's 2014 earnings, lowering net income by $2.7 billion, or more than a third. The amount of the penalty was higher than analysts expected, according to the Wall Street...

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Morning Scan: Fed Flexible on Rate Hike; JPM Battles Calls for Break Up

02/25/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

The Oracle of D.C.: The papers offer varying interpretations of Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen's testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. The New York Times says Yellen sought to give the central bank leeway in the timeline of its interest-rate increase. Fed officials could firm up plans to raise rates as soon as June at a March policy meeting, but "Yellen emphasized that patience remained the Fed's watchword, and that the persistence...

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Morning Scan: HSBC Problems Aplenty; Precious Metals Probe Targets 10 Banks

02/24/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

HSBC Sweats in the Spotlight: The hits keep on coming for HSBC. The U.K. bank on Monday announced subpar earnings for 2014 and lowered its financial targets, while chief executive Stuart Gulliver was pummeled with questions about the $7.7 million he opted to hold in a Swiss bank account through a Panamanian company until 2003. Tax experts tell the Times that Gulliver's arrangement was legal, but it's not terrific press for a...

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Morning Scan: Caution Signs Ahead for Rollback of Bank Regs; U.K. Bank Woes

02/23/15

Wall Street Journal

Dark clouds are hovering over the effort to amend Dodd-Frank and other bank regulations, in some measure because the new GOP leadership on Capitol Hill is trying to make changes beyond what banks have asked for. At a recent meeting at a Washington hotel, according to anonymous sources, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., reiterated his stance that he wants to axe the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's independent funding stream; and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas,...

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Morning Scan: Fears Raised on Hack of Phone-Card Maker; JPMorgan's Cyber Army

02/20/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Hacked Off: So much for mobile banking. The Dutch company Gemalto, the world's largest maker of SIM cards for mobile phones, was hacked by a joint team from the National Security Agency and the U.K.'s counterpart intelligence agency. (The report comes from documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to the website The Intercept.) Gemalto sells its SIM cards to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and other telecom companies. Gemalto's financial institution clients...

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Morning Scan: Timing of Interest-Rate Hike Questioned; Subprime Borrowing Booms

02/19/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Tapping the Brakes?: Hold your horses on that rate increase. According to analyses in the Financial Times and the New York Times, members of the Federal Open Market Committee appear to remain divided over when to start raising short-term interest rates, based on minutes of the committee's Jan. 27-28 meeting, released on Wednesday. (The Wall Street Journal, however, offers a somewhat-more bullish view of the minutes.) A "premature" rise in rates could...

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Morning Scan: Prosecutors Raid HSBC's Swiss Offices; BofA CEO Takes a Pay Cut

02/18/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Swiss Search HSBC Offices: Geneva public prosecutors launched what appeared to be a surprise raid on HSBC's Swiss offices Wednesday morning as part of a criminal probe into the bank's alleged money-laundering misdeeds. Prosecutors issued a public statement saying the search came in response to "recent public revelations" about the Swiss unit, an apparent reference to the vast files provided by whistleblower Herve Falciani to several media outlets. Among other things, theÂ...

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Morning Scan: Russian-Speaking Group's Cyber Attacks Detailed; Losing Their Patience

02/17/15

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

The Russian Hacker Mob: Russian-speaking gangs of hackers have stolen millions of dollars since 2013 from banks in the U.S., Eastern Europe and Russia and according to the Russian computer-security firm Kaspersky Lab, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Financial Times' report on the same study said the thieves' total haul may be closer to $1 billion. Most alarming is the lab's claim the cyberattack is still active. The Kaspersky Lab issued...

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