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Long Time Coming: It's been a long and bloody road to a $1.37 billion settlement between Standard & Poor's and the U.S. Justice Department. The deal, announced Tuesday, resolves accusations that S&P misled investors about the credit quality of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis. But the media coverage is far more focused on what happened during the two years it took the parties to reach an agreement. S&P...

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Deutsche Downer: Deutsche Bank's quarterly results beat analysts' expectations, but the bar was pretty low to begin with given that analysts had forecast a loss. "A single quarter aside, the performance of the stock and of the company has simply been poor," writes the Financial Times' Lex team. The column recommends Deutsche consider spinning off "some or all" of its retail banking units and consider boosting returns by growing its asset management...

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A Patient Fed: When analyzing the Federal Reserve's statements about its timeline for raising short-term interest rates, it helps to have practiced close reading in college. The Fed said Wednesday it plans to be "patient" in adjusting monetary policy, which "means the central bank isn't likely to raise rates at its next two policy meetings," the Wall Street Journal reports. In other words, a rate hike wouldn't come until June at the...

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Pushback Against ECB Rules: Last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, gave European bankers unhappy with stricter capital rules a chance to air their grievances. The Financial Times reports bankers in Davos argued that tough capital requirements will render the European Central Bank's quantitative easing less effective. They say the initiatives work at cross-purposes: QE is meant to encourage investors to take on riskier assets that invigorate the economy, while the...

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Canadian Invasion: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Reuters (via the New York Times) all take a closer look at Royal Bank of Canada's decision to acquire City National in Los Angeles. RBC may have stubbed its toe in its previous American incursion with RBC Centura (which it later sold to PNC), but City National is a different play. The California bank has a big presence in wealth management, particularly managing...