US Banker articles from April 2009

US Banker archives from April 2009

Bank Bashing May Be in Style, But It's Not Helping; Morgan Stanley has canceled all client events at a PGA tournament it is sponsoring in Ohio in June. That might cheer policymakers, but it's bad news for local hotels, restaurants and catering firms, which might soon be asking for a bail-out of their own.(Troubled Asset Relief Program)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Alan Kline, Editor-in-Chief Hundreds of banks have received capital infusions from the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program, but between restrictions on executive pay and politicians trying to micromanage TARP...

M&A Wants Uncle Sam; Government assistance will drive deals in what will be a cautious year.(mergers and acquisitions)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Joseph Rosta After a lackluster first half of 2008, merger and acquisition activity in the banking sector picked up in the second half as the financial crisis worsened and regulators moved aggressively to pair the most troubled...

Bankin' Made Funner With Different Skins; A small Okie institution, Bank of the Wichitas, wanted to cast a wider net online. It chose a humorous new moniker - Redneck Bank - and intro'd high rates to get them - that deposits rollin' in.(Where Bankin's Funner)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Anthony Malakian For Bank of the Wichitas in Oklahoma, creating a moniker for its new Internet bank was not as simple as attaching "direct" to the end of its name. The owners wanted a unique name that would play both inside and...

When Bankers Don't Want to Be Friends with Bankers; Many bankers are shying away from loan participations. But there are reasons to believe that this market will bounce back along with the economy. It all begins with confidence and funding.
April 1, 2009... Byline: Anthony Malakian In the areas of the country hardest hit by the recession and credit crisis, the loan participation market has dried up. It's a given that the economy has to improve in order to get the juice flowing, but bankers...

Sun of N.J. Scores Big Sales After Bringing Reps In-House; By bringing investment sales reps in-house, Sun National Bank has tripled investment product sales to $3 million and put it on equal footing with its peers. Workers are happy with the strategy, too.(Wealth Management (Investment Sales Reps))
April 1, 2009... Byline: Steve Garmhausen Sun National Bank in Vineland, N.J., has found a big difference between using investment sales representatives that work for a third-party broker-dealer and employing them directly. In January 2008, the $3.6...

Avoid Shortcuts and Panic in Troubled Real Estate Loans.
April 1, 2009... Byline: Dwayne E. Toler, Managing Director, NewSource Partners LLC What started out as a credit crisis in residential real estate has now spread to commercial real estate. Most troubling is that the fundamentals of CRE are crumbling:...

Trade Credit Default Swaps on an Exchange; Right now there's no clearing and no truly transparent pricing for credit default swaps. It's time to save the CDS market before another financial firm implodes.
April 1, 2009... Byline: Joseph Rosta The credit default swap market is viable but stressed, and its opacity continues to be a threat to itself and to the economy. There is broad agreement that greater transparency could be achieved through a dedicated...

EXECUTIVE PAY: The Compensation Conundrum; Linking Pay to TARP Crimps Recruiting.(Troubled Asset Relief Program)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk Healthy banks that agreed to take money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program are beginning to rue their decision. Last fall, as a way to boost lending and stimulate the financial system, the government strongly...

Scene and Heard.
April 1, 2009... "Breaking some of the national banks into pieces ultimately is desirable. Bigger is not necessarily better. But nationalization is not the most effective way to do it." Gary CAdy, president and CEO of Torrey Pines Bank, weighing in on the...

Small Bank Divide Now a Trap? Report Stokes Viability Concerns.
April 1, 2009... Byline: Glen Fest Many community banks are positioning themselves as safe havens at a time of economic turmoil, and the smallest among them - the roughly 3,000 institutions with $100 million of assets or less - appear to be safest of all....

Noted and Noteworthy.(Pentagon Federal Credit Union)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Board members at Pentagon Federal Credit Union are so furious over the cost of bailing out corporate credit unions that they are considering the unthinkable: converting the $13 billion-asset Pentagon Federal into a mutual savings bank,...

Good Luck With That; Without a standardized data-driven reporting system, the newly created regulator of systemic risk faces the same challenges that led to the current failure.(Risk management)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Congress's banking chiefs are spending a lot of time these days pow-wowing over the shape of financial regulation post-Armageddon, with the creation of a systemic risk regulatory function a high priority for both...

PAYMENTS: Is BofA/Wells Venture a Threat to ACH Network? The shared processing platform won't be up and running for a year, but experts are already worrying that it will slow the industry's progress on e-payments.(payments venture between Wells Fargo and Bank of America)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Glen Fest Aforthcoming joint payments venture between Wells Fargo and Bank of America, through which both banks will share a platform to process their automated clearing house transactions, continues to percolate debate. Nearly...

Branding Extensions Target a Savings Boom; Consumers want ways to increase their savings; bankers want to boost deposits. Naturally, many institutions are rolling out campaigns centered around ways to save.
April 1, 2009... Byline: Anthony Malakian All it took was a massive recession and a plummeting Dow to turn Americans into savers again. According to the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, the fourth-quarter 2008 savings rate rose to...

AD Beat: Pushing a New Button; With its Spend Analyzer tool, Discover has become the first card provider to aggressively market a PFM site. In this tough economy, it might be the right play.(Discover Financial Services Inc.)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Anthony Malakian As a rule, credit card advertising emphasizes spending - think "Chase what matters" or "Visa: It's everywhere you want to be." But with the recession turning many Americans into penny pinchers, Discover...