Bank channel

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.

PNC's Atlanta branch deal underscores how wary acquisition-hungry banks are as they bulk up in a slow and risky market.

The finalization of new debit card regulations will likely provide a tailwind to bank technology spending later this year, according to the top executive of vendor Fiserv Inc. The company expects its clients will funnel more money toward software purchases as a result of rules, known collectively as the Durbin amendment, which the Federal Reserve Board shored up last month.

When elephants dance, the mice get trampled. That is how one lobbyist described the reasons banks have remained largely silent on the debt ceiling negotiations, despite the enormous impact that a default would have on the economy.

Warburg Pincus, one of the oldest and best-known private-equity players, has arrived at a strategy that experts say might offer a blueprint for the next phase of private-equity investing in banks.

In a presidential race dominated by fights over the debt limit and job creation, it is unusual for a candidate to devote much attention to the impact of Dodd-Frank on small banks. But Newt Gingrich has rarely taken the conventional route.

Five banks — M&T Bank Corp., PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Hancock Holding Co., People's United Financial Inc. and First Niagara Financial Group Inc. — countered early criticism of the prices and rationales of their recent acquisitions with hard data.

With loan demand still weak in many areas of the country, more and more bankers are starting to believe that their banks will need to merge with other institutions to achieve meaningful growth.

In the battle over Dodd-Frank implementation, large U.S. banks may do well to remember the story of the boy who cried wolf.

Given the low interest rates banks are paying on deposits these days, you might not think it’s much of a big deal that Thursday marks the end of an 80-year-old ban on banks paying interest on business accounts. But if you thought that, you are clearly not a financial advisor working at a bank.

After all the blood, sweat and tears that has gone into the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, a new survey revealed that almost half of all bankers do not think it will help prevent risks to the financial system.