Bank channel

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.

Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Brian Moynihan sent a letter to the firm’s employees on Monday night in an effort to calm them following the firm’s 20% stock plummet that day.

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.

Mortgage woes have been the overriding concern of investors in the country's largest banks in recent months. Not any more. In the wake of Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. government debt on Friday, fears about capital markets exposure are now taking precedence over mortgages and cancelling out the perceived safety that investors normally ascribe to the largest banks.

The downgrading of U.S. government debt by Standard & Poor's Friday evening is a grim milestone in the history of American finance -- and one that will be parsed in excruciating detail in coming days -- but the ultimate practical impact on financial institutions seems likely to be minimal in the short term. The reasons are many.

Starting on Jan. 12, anyone who wants to pay the $185,000 fee and fill out a 250-page application can apply for a domain name that suits their brand name (e.g. .bnymellon), opening up an opportunity to banks to market and brand themselves differently through their internet addresses and to offer more secure online banking.

In a new regulatory filing, bank holding company Regions Financial estimates it could face additional legal losses totaling up to $300 million.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has petitioned to intervene in the proposed $8.5 billion Bank of America Corp. private label mortgage settlement.

The problem of "too big to fail" is continuing to bedevil the U.S. economy despite claims by some regulators that the Dodd-Frank Act effectively ended it.

Global financial firms are in danger of drowning in the ocean of uncertainty that floats between the rhetoric of the G-20 and the reality of international regulation.

A recent federal appeals court decision is likely to cause the delay of dozens of pending Dodd-Frank Act regulations. The U. S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit Court ruled July 22 that the Securities and Exchange Commission did not properly conduct a cost-benefit analysis before finalizing a proxy rule required by the regulatory reform law.