Joe Adler

Compared with other recent breaches, the theft of 6,400 user email addresses and passwords on the American Bankers Association's website might seem like small potatoes. But experts said the attack — the first in the association's history — was still significant and could have implications for banks.

An institution under attack needs to seek a balance where it can maintain customer confidence without making public statements that are too bold.

Bank of America must pay a record amount for mortgage-related claims, but the accord still leaves questions about tax liability and other banks in the government's crosshairs.

The Justice Department's $7 billion deal with Citigroup is likely not the last big government maneuver to penalize banks for faulty mortgage-related practices leading to the financial crisis.

The Justice Department likely hopes that Credit Suisse's guilty plea to a criminal charge will squash the idea that some large institutions are too important to the economy to prosecute. But experts say the issue is more complicated than that, arguing that the debate will live on. Here's why.

Regulators seized two banks in Florida, and one in Kentucky, in a trio of failures Friday.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s Quarterly Banking Profile described an industry gaining health, but it still faces several key challenges to maintaining growth.

Tom Hoenig, a FDIC board member, reiterated his doubts that too big to fail has been eliminated, and offered his prescriptions for strengthening the system.

The elections mostly delivered the status quo, but raised a host of questions about how lawmakers will tackle the fiscal cliff, big bank breakups and housing finance reform.

After being named head of the Financial Services Roundtable on Thursday, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty laid out his agenda for the trade group, saying banks need to do more to police themselves.

The FDIC is trying to help bankers prep for exams and more clearly understand the results as part of a broader effort at improving relations, Martin Gruenberg, the agency's acting Chairman, said.

The big question following JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s now-notorious derivative trade is whether it would have been permitted under the so-called 'Volcker Rule.' But the answer is clear cut to an advocacy group that has led calls for regulatory restrictions after the 2008 crisis.

Warren Buffett's $5 billion investment in Bank of America Corp. was truly daring. It brought him a strong, instant return, and gave BofA an air of desperately-needed stability.

The banking industry earned $28.8 billion in the second quarter thanks once again to lower provisions for loan losses, and a regulatory watch list of troubled banks shrank for the first time in nearly five years.

On the surface, the industry turned a corner last quarter. Loans actually grew, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. returned to black and the official watch list for failure-prone banks shrank for the first time in five years. But a closer look at the FDIC's Quarterly Banking Profile reveals a familiar theme: banks are still tiptoeing to recovery.

Miami-based Ocean Bank faces a nearly $11 million fine to settle charges it turned a blind eye to drug traffickers allegedly using the bank to launder money.

It sounds strange to say, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is solvent again. That the FDIC was technically in the red for seven quarters -- the result of heavy failures and very strict accounting --- was a lesser-known fact of the 2008 crisis, and so news last month that the Deposit Insurance Fund turned positive in the second quarter also drew scant attention.

For banks, the supervisory grade known as a "Camels" score is a critical and confidential yardstick of strength. But for many in the public, it is a riddle too tantalizing to ignore.

As the stock prices of the big banks cratered on Monday, particularly for Bank of America Corp., pundits and industry observers began worrying that a second financial crisis was in the offing, including the possibility of the failure of a large financial institution.

An aggressive push by the Justice Department to investigate fair lending claims is prompting a backlash from bankers who claim the government is abusing its authority and contradicting findings by other federal regulators.