Bank channel

If Bank of America Corp.'s proposal to settle its mortgage-backed securities claims for $8.5 billion is approved as is by a court, the deal would provide the template for other banks to clean up their own MBS messes.

Citi Private Bank has hired Alexander “Lex” Zaharoff as managing director and head of the North America investment lab.

Consolidation continues to play a small but growing role in the resolution of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. In the past two weeks, acquiring banks have agreed to resolve the unpaid Tarp funds of target institutions, bringing the number of such deals to 16 with the vast majority taking place since mid-2010.

With the macroeconomic outlook still glum, housing prices still depressed and the FHA's grip on the market for low-down payment loans still intact, the mortgage insurers are stuck in the same rut. New business volume remains down sharply from pre-crisis levels, the insurers continue to pay out hefty claims on soured mortgage loans, and the forecast for when the industry returns to profitability is again murky at best.

The Treasury Department has unexpectedly allied with state regulators and consumer groups in their bid to force the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to dial back its preemption standards.

For every answer international regulators give on a requirement for a large bank capital surcharge, it just feels like more questions pop up.

As banks search for their place in the fast evolving world of social media, they are increasingly looking to technology to help them cope with a tangle of potential regulatory and legal challenges.

By itself the drop in deposit account service fees caused by the year-old consumer overdraft protections is a minor problem for FNB Inc. of Dennison, Ohio.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act case whose outcome could shield banks and other lenders from litigation under a wide range of federal and state laws.

It turns out banks are reluctant to help dig their own graves. In letters to federal regulators, several institutions said they remain worried about a requirement that they submit a "living will" outlining how best to dismantle them in a crisis.

Small business owners are seeing some signs of improvement in the overall U.S. economy but that optimism is tempered by their concerns about a general sense of uncertainty as the economy slowly works its way out of the recession.

The hand-wringing over bank capital levels is pulling the spotlight off a bigger issue: effective oversight of the largest firms. In the wake of the crisis, regulators have forced banks to hold both a higher level and a higher quality of capital. They've created a tangle of complicated rules.

Responding to frustrated lawmakers who have yet to see the Obama administration give out any funds from its $30 billion small business lending program, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday the fault lay with the banking regulators.

Bankers are cautiously upbeat about their industry. Given executives' overwhelming bias toward positive thinking, however, that is cause for concern.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. convened some of the best banking-policy minds on the planet Tuesday to look at how best the agency can use its new powers to unwind a large, systemically important bank.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch will double the ranks of what it calls its Financial Solutions Advisors by year's end.

While international regulators continue to spar over the right size of a proposed capital surcharge for the largest banks, the U.S. banking agencies are disagreeing among themselves on the issue.

Fiserv's upgrades to key processing software could remove another roadblock in the way of the many banks that want to speed up their ACH payments.

Now that its private-equity injection is almost a done deal, First BanCorp's natural next move would be to consolidate power in Puerto Rico. Unless it sells itself instead.

Royal Bank of Canada plans to grow its U.S wealth and capital markets businesses after agreeing to sell its U.S. retail banking operations to PNC Financial Services Group.