Bank channel

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.

James Kaplan's law firm was negotiating a handful of bank mergers when the stock market collapsed two weeks ago. All of them are bogged down in new squabbles over whether the seller can say "deal's off" if the buyer's shares tank.

Bank of America will lay off at least 3,500 employees in the next few months.

Credit card chargeoffs have been plunging since the middle of last year, moving against the tide of an anemic jobs environment but supported by slowing bankruptcies.

While lawmakers raising concerns about a potential merger is nothing new, Rep. Barney Frank added a unique twist to his letter asking the Federal Reserve Board to take more time to review the Capital One-ING Direct transaction: the potential for systemic risk.

Bankers are fond of the Small Business Lending Fund, but the SBLF is playing hard to get.

Credit card customers are the happiest they've been since the financial crisis, thanks in part to a government crackdown on the card industry.

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors this week said John Ryan will succeed Neil Milner as its new president and CEO, effective Jan. 1, 2012.

The list of objections to the risk retention proposal appears endless. While most of the attention so far has focused on an exemption to the plan for "qualified residential mortgages," bankers' fears about the proposal go far beyond that.

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.

Lots of banks are under immense pressure to grow. None of them are expected to accomplish that with loans, interchange fees or much else anytime soon. Deal-minded Wall Streeters forcefully and repeatedly offer this answer: buy somebody else, or sell. But the Dodd-Frank Act makes that an especially painful option to consider for midsize banks like First Horizon National Corp., USAA Federal Savings, Rabobank and New York Community Bancorp.

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average entered free fall this week before recovering somewhat on Thursday, the rhetoric over a possible big bank failure heated up.

Wells Fargo Securities has named Michael Buttner as the new managing director of its bank strategies group where he'll lead and oversee a team providing portfolio management to financial services clients.

Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. debt last week is likely to hasten the replacement of credit ratings within bank regulatory requirements.

Their portfolios are comparable in size. They are in similar businesses. But HSBC Holdings Plc has a deal to sell its $30 billion of private-label credit cards assets to Capital One Financial Corp., while Citigroup Inc. has been holding the bag on $45 billion of retailers' credit card loans for more than two years.

The Federal Reserve is holding short-term rates near the "zero bound," but some deposit franchises have moved closer to the mark than others.

BNY Mellon will cut its work force by 3 percent or 1,500 positions, by year's end, as it sees expenses growing faster than revenue.

U.S. banks can expect more pain for the foreseeable future now that Federal Reserve Board officials opted to key interest rates at the same level for the next two years.

The McLean, Va., bank has agreed to buy the monoline U.S. credit card and private label credit card businesses of HSBC for $32.7 billion, according to press releases issued Wednesday by Capital One and HSBC. The purchase price represents a premium of $2.6 billion, or 8.75% premium of gross customer loan balances, the releases said.