Bank channel

As the distressed-asset market begins to stabilize, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is shaking up the way it handles failed banks and their assets.

Fixed and variable annuities sales are very sluggish, while mutual fund sales have taken off.

State regulators are urging Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd to change a provision in the regulatory reform bill that they claim would force most large state banks to convert to national charters.

Privately held companies that received money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program are starting to worry about paying it back.

RBS plans to open more branches in markets where it has a small presence and to test the waters in Florida, the Carolinas and several other Southeastern states with automated teller machines, said Martin Bischoff, a vice chairman who runs consumer and business banking for RBS' U.S. operation.

With the Treasury Department planning what essentially could amount to a series of frequent block sales between now and the end of the year, investment companies, pension funds and mutual funds could find an easy way into the stock that would allow Citi, notable among big banking companies for its retail-heavy investor base, to narrow the gap with sector peers.

Four more banks failed Friday night totaling $1.2 billion in assets and costing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. an estimated $320 million.

So, banks have finally come around to looking at compensation through the lens of risk management. Not to be too cynical, but even this has its limitations.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Manhattan has refused to dismiss class action claims filed by local governments alleging that Wells Fargo & Co. and 15 other banks, broker-dealers and investment brokers conspired to rig bids and fix prices of guaranteed investment and derivatives contracts in the municipal market.

The Obama administration plans to announce Friday that it is revamping its foreclosure prevention plan to encourage lenders to offer principal write downs to troubled borrowers.

Wells Fargo & Co. has rarely felt the need to make major incursions into markets occupied by entrenched competitors. In fact, its bread-and-butter strategy dictated the opposite. But when a company makes a big purchase, like Wells' acquisition of Wachovia at the height of the financial crisis, it has to figure out what to do with businesses it might not have embraced otherwise.

Wells Fargo & Co. announced this week that another major step in its merger with Wachovia Corp. is now complete. The companies consolidated over the weekend to form one investment bank, Wells Fargo Securities, and one commercial bank, Wells Fargo Bank NA.

Hard as it is to defend the Byzantine nature of U.S. bank supervision, it's at least as hard to find a model guaranteed to provide a better defense against financial crises.

Wall Street is abuzz over whether the FDIC will encourage pension funds to invest in failed banks.

Despite advisors’ bullish prognostications, January's average production dropped by 11% to $14,930 from a month earlier.

Senior managers at Morgan Keegan & Co. argue that their restructuring moves last week are a break with the past — and a sign that the securities unit still has a future with its parent company, Regions Financial Corp.

Aon Consulting, the global benefits and human capital consulting business of Aon Corp., announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire J.P. Morgan Compensation and Benefit Strategies, a division of J.P. Morgan Retirement Plan Services LLC.

37 failures in 2010 more than doubles count at this point last year

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd's regulatory reform bill is generally winning praise for provisions giving the government more power to smoothly unwind a large, systemically important firm, but is also raising a host of practical concerns observers say could undermine its effectiveness.

New group brings together more than 300 of the firm's professionals who specialize in either corporate or public finance banking