Bank channel

The conference committee made critical changes to the regulatory reform bill in its first substantive week of work, but the hardest decisions are still ahead.

On Friday, the New York-based company announced plans to acquire I(3)Wealth Advisors of Toronto, its first wealth management acquisition in Canada.

While April’s sales couldn’t compete with March’s rocketing success, quarterly fees buoyed overall performance.

After a heated debate, the regulatory reform conference committee agreed late Thursday to scale back a provision of the bill that would eliminate the use of trust-preferred securities as Tier 1 capital.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday accused the former owner of Taylor Bean & Whitaker with orchestrating a massive equity and MBS fraud tied to his firm's warehouse borrowings from Colonial Bank, a depository it tried to take control of last summer using Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money.

Regulatory reform conferees tussled Wednesday over provisions that would allow the Government Accountability Office more power to audit the Federal Reserve Board, give shareholders a nonbinding vote on compensation and strengthen investor protections.

Brokers started streaming from wire houses a couple of years ago, and judging from the experience of Columbia State Bank in Tacoma, there are plenty still interested in leaving.

The Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s largest bank, plans to boost its presence in Europe by acquiring an investment banking boutique in London, according to a report in the Financial Times.

With the global debt crisis set to corral investment banking's bull run, it's questionable whether the largest lenders can compensate for a resultant decline in a top source of profits.

Lawmakers unexpectedly added an overhaul of the deposit insurance system to the final regulatory reform legislation on Tuesday, adding sweeping provisions that were not part of either the House or Senate revamp bills.

Brendan McDonagh, the chief executive of HSBC North America Holdings Inc., is retiring July 31 after winning credit for turning around the global finance giant's operation in the U.S. and Canada, which was hobbled by a troubled consumer lending business it bought before the recession.

The merger of the Office of Thrift Supervision into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will eliminate some of the key benefits of choosing the charter, and leave a single agency trying to enforce two different sets of rules, observers said.

The unit of Bank of America hired three executives from City National Bank to expand in California.

Many Gulf Coast banks are in damage-control mode as they scramble to figure out how badly the oil spill could hurt their bottom lines.

BB&T Corp.'s mutual fund family has had a dramatic gain in assets over the past year, and the bank's asset management arm is laying the groundwork for more expansion.

As U.S. Trust continues pursuing its mission to expand its leadership position in wealth management and enhance its business with ultra-high-net worth clients, the firm announced on Tuesday that it appointed five senior-level wealth management experts to key markets nationally.

The regulatory reform conference committee officially kicked off Thursday, and while the final fate of key provisions remains up in the air, it is clear senators have several advantages over their House counterparts.

Many troubled banks are pleading with investors to sell trust-preferred securities back to them at a discount, warning they may fail otherwise. But a small group of investors are calling the banks' requests a bluff.

While banks are optimistic about the economy and their customers perceptions of them, customers tell another story.

Bank securities held by the Treasury Department through the Troubled Asset Relief Program would no longer count toward a banking company's Tier 1 capital under the Senate's version of the reform bill, legal experts said.