Bank channel

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.

For banks such as Signature, New York Community Bancorp and Sterling Bancorp, it is small and midsize businesses like fish-market vendors at Hunts Point in the Bronx that are fueling loan growth. Commercial lenders in around the city also said they are benefitting from rock-bottom vacancy rates for apartments.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) closed out the first half of the year by closing down another three banks, bringing its total number of closings for first six months of 2011 to 61. More troubling, however, is the fact that it now has identified another 888 as "problem institutions."

Green Bank N.A. this week announced that it now has more than $1 billion in total assets, up from $667 million at this point last year.

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.

David Stevens arrived as a commissioner at the Federal Housing Administration in 2009 vowing to restore financial discipline to a government housing body facing the stresses of a post-crash world. A former mortgage banker himself, Stevens, now 54, bolstered the agency's finances and pursued alleged wrongdoing at nonbank lenders including Berkshire Hathaway and Goldman Sachs & Co. affiliates.

While the media, analysts and other industry observers all devote enormous amounts of time and attention to mobile banking and mobile payment developments, of which there seem to be new several new ones each day, there’s a quieter channel change going on that’s received little attention. That is the growth in online banking.

When Democrats used their majorities in the House and Senate last year to pass a financial overhaul largely along partisan lines, top Republicans were clear about what should happen next.

There is currently no requirement that brokers who have been disciplined or who have settled with investors in arbitrations be listed on the company's own broker-check document.

The Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing next Thursday on the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Herb Allison, the former president of Merrill Lynch, was relaxing on a beach in the Virgin Islands in September 2008 when he got an urgent phone call from a senior aide to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.