Bank channel

Cost control will sharpen further in 2013, given continued pressure from low interest rates and loan competition, U.S. Bancorp says. Other banks will face similar challenges.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth- biggest U.S. bank by assets, said quarterly profit almost tripled as gains in the value of the firm’s own investments contributed to the first year of revenue growth since 2009.

David Duffy joined the group as sales director and will be responsible for the firm’s residential mortgage business in the Mid-Atlantic region, focusing primarily on Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

One new aspect about the platform is that it incorporates a unified managed account structure.

Bank of America agreed to pay $62.5 million to resolve investor claims that the bank’s directors mishandled the acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co., company officials said.

Some $152 billion left the equity markets last year. About $90 billion went into bonds and bond funds. That means $60 billion appears to have left financial markets altogether—that’s a lot of potential for bank advisors .

CEO Michael Corbat's 13 reshuffled direct reports are all men — an extreme example of the gender gap that exposes banks to reputational and operational risks and charges of being out of touch.

Net income advanced to a record $5.09 billion, or 91 cents a share, from $4.11 billion, or 73 cents, a year earlier.

The unit earned $351 million in net income in the fourth quarter of 2012, up 13% from the year before.

Christopher Hohlstein is based in the firm’s growing office in Atlanta and reports to Craig Sutherland, president of the Southeast U.S. region.

Shelter Insurance joins the growing list of insurance companies to unwind its bank after it faced having more than $1 million in annual costs tied to Dodd-Frank.

Bank of America Corp.’s brokerage arm and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s asset-management division are among businesses ripe for divestiture if U.S. banks break up to improve stock prices, according to CLSA Ltd.’s Mike Mayo.

The banking industry is expected to benefit marginally from the deal to avert the fiscal cliff, but looming fights over tax reform and the debt ceiling remain.

Financial advisors in the bank channel often talk about “leveraging” their branch’s tellers and lenders to build their client books. But it’s the rare bank investment program that effectively ends up partnering with other bank units. Kim Burdick, senior vice president and group executive for community banking at Fremont Bank in Fremont, Calif., thinks he knows the reason. …

With an increasingly globalized community of investors, the United Nations Federal Credit Union is living up to its mandate of doing good in significant ways.

After we published our top 50 Bank Advisors list last month, a couple of advisors who didn't make the list pointed out that it was essentially based on "old" data. I noted that all data is old, otherwise it would be a projection, which I thought was somewhat meaningful. But based on the reaction, I realized that I should have said to wait until our Outlook issue in January because that would be, well, a look ahead into the new year and beyond.

Don't raise the sails just yet. But as 2013 brightens, many financial pundits foresee potentially bluer skies for investors and advisors alike.

On Wall Street profiles the most influential personalities in the advisory industry this year.

Dale Yahnke has built up $2.1 billion in AUM by focusing on low costs and specific solutions.

Advisors naively believe that only 17% of their clients hold a direct account when in fact 74% do, according to a new report from Boston-based research firm Cerulli Associates.