US Banker articles from December 2003

US Banker archives from December 2003

Looking for that Silver Lining? Keep Looking.: This year was marked by great loss...of lives, jobs, even corporate decency. There were painful lessons; a few bright spots. Still, 2004 looks better every day.
December 1, 2003... Two thousand and three won't go down in the history books as one of this country's better years. With one war raging in Iraq and one abandoned in Afghanistan, it's all the Bush Administration can do to deflect Americans' attention from a...

Taking stock: New York Stock Exchange Works to Repair Its Image: Investors don't care, but seat prices are down.
December 1, 2003... John Reed has proposed sweeping changes to the New York Stock Exchange in his role as interim chairman, yet one question lingers: is it enough to repair the image of the 211-year-old organization? In the wake of Richard Grasso's...

Scene and Heard.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... "It's critical they stop the stonewalling bull----. As we say here in Texas, 'that dog won't hunt.'" Neal Burns, University of Texas at Austin's director of the Center for Brand Research, on reform of the New York Stock Exchange. "My...

Mergers & Acquisitions: Nara Eyes Pacific Union: Korean-American banking players maneuver.
December 1, 2003... Nara's new CEO, S.H. Hong, looks to be in the catbird's seat at the most aggressive Korean-oriented bank in the country. He's in a good place to pounce. One of his erstwhile competitors, the $1 billion Pacific Union Bank, looks about ripe for a...

Hits and Has-Beens.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... It didn't take long. Once Bank of America and Fleet Bank announced their merger, Richard DeMartini was given his walking papers. He's out as asset management group president at BofA after the second quarter of next year. DeMartini is the last...

Shared Branching: Credit Unions Band Together: Can the model yield better service at lower costs?
December 1, 2003... When Service centers Corp. and CO-OP Network merged last year, credit unions got a boost with a broader network of branch facilities and ATMs. The concept was simple: credit unions would pool resources to offer their members greater convenience...

Pipeline.
December 1, 2003... Surprise in Your Own Backyard US Bank recently shocked itself after taking a close look at its correspondent banking business. A strategic review of its three businesses-credit and debit card payments processing, ATM transaction...

The Power of Wagon Wheels. A Chronicle of Wells Fargo's History.
December 1, 2003... Stagecoach: Wells Fargo And the American West By Philip L. Fradkin Simon & Schuster, 250 pages, $14.00 In 1860, it was a privilege to pay the equivalent of $3,000 to $7,000 for a 20-day, 2,000-mile, cross-country trip in extreme...

Word Is...: Checkup on China Shows Feverish Figures.
December 1, 2003... There's a reason they call economics a dismal science. With the cold of winter still in the air, out comes news of a viral outbreak, scary and deadly like in the films 12 Monkeys or The Andromeda Strain. Toronto is quarantined. Hong Kong is on...

Noted and Noteworthy.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... From the we-used-to-offer-this-as-a-matter-of course-but-haven't-done-so-in-a-such-a-long-time-we-can-introduce-it-as-a-new-service-dep't: Monmouth Community Bank recently announced the advent of free coin counting for customers. That's...

Manufacturing a China Syndrome: The Bush team keeps making Beijing trade an economic issue for manufacturers, prompting some to recall long-ago clashes in Japan. It's not a happy memory.
December 1, 2003... The world must have been seamless and beautiful to Yang Liwei as he soared in orbit, peering from the rocketing Shenzhou 5 capsule and making history as China's first spaceman. No sooner does he get his feet back on the ground-"clang!"-Don...

Derivatives Trading: Slugfest in Chicago Over Eurex U.S. Launch: Eurex U.S. is an audacious move given the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade's market dominance. Ugly? Yes. Surprised? Hardly.
December 1, 2003... Forget Cubs fans' lingering depression over Steve Bartman's pennant-grabbing interference at Wrigley. The deepest hostility in Chicago these days is over Eurex's attempt to muscle into a derivatives market dominated by the Chicago Mercantile...

Citi's Fun ID Theft Spots Are Stealing Spotlight: What does a slovenly couch potato have in common with a bustier-buying Valley Girl? They're not who they say they are. Citi scores big with ID theft campaign.
December 1, 2003... When $1,500 black leather bustiers that "lift and separate" start showing up on credit card statements of middle-aged, male blue-collar workers, something's drastically wrong. The issue isn't cross-dressing, but identity theft, which cost...

AD Beat: Jack and the Beanstalk Hit The Big City: Advertising agency needed to literally think outside the big boxy confines of Times Square. Solution: just look up.
December 1, 2003... Jack and the Beanstalk is the story of a young boy who climbs into the heavens and finds, to his astonishment, a castle in the clouds. Everyone's familiar with the tale, and it's this kind of imagery-a folk myth universally understood-that...

Wells' Acceptance of Mexican IDs Sparks Debate, Opportunity: Wells Fargo's decision to accept the matricula consular, a Mexican ID, to open accounts is controversial. Miriam Galicia Duarte, vp of multicultural communications, says the effort is well worth it-despite the incessant heat.
December 1, 2003... Two months after 9-11, Wells Fargo announced it was going to accept a foreign ID, Mexico's matricula consular, to open new accounts-something no other bank did before. The bold decision sparked heated debate, drove some Wells customers out, yet...

(An investor's kind of) Guy.
December 1, 2003... M&T Bank chief Robert Wilmers' penchant for bank buys and good wine-he has his own vineyard in France-hints at his willingness to take risks. Yet it is his bank's disciplined execution and annual returns that have made billionaire Warren...

Let Go of the Brakes. And Buckle Up.
December 1, 2003... It's the holidays. The new governor in California is figuring out how to roll over bond debt and get help for his scorched hillsides. Finance executives are looking over good economic news and trying to figure if it will stick this time. Dick...

The Bond Market: Traders May Profit, Even If Lenders Don't.
December 1, 2003... In July, St. Louis-based Charter Communications planned to sell more than $1 billion in bonds to help shore up its sagging balance sheet. The cable company, once a bellwether of the junk-bond market, got a rough reception. It pulled the...

Calendar.
December 1, 2003... 5 Dec. 2002 Lawrence Lindsey and Paul O'Neill, the nation's top economic advisor and Treasury Secretary, respectively, are out. 22 Jan Marvin Bower, leader of McKinsey & Co., dies at 99. 27 Jan Dollar touches $1.09 to the...

The Auto Industry: Baby, You Can Drive My Car.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Cleveland's Dan Nowak spent six months out of work this year, but it didn't take him long after he found a new job to start thinking about bigger-ticket items. "I went out and bought a real nice 1997-it's not new, but it's in good...

The Housing Market: Do I Have A House For You... River Views.
December 1, 2003... One of the country's biggest home lenders has its eye on expanding in Florida, and it's no wonder, says Chris Priso: Port St. Lucie is selling like hotcakes. "In the last six months, our lot prices have doubled," says Prisco, who runs a little...

California De Novos Benefit From External Forces: The California economy has been dismal, yet a handful of startups in the state are making decent headway, capitalizing on the big-bank backlash and external IT expertise.
December 1, 2003... Redwood Capital Bank isn't scheduled to open for business until this month, but when it does, the new bank hopes a solid information technology foundation will make it look as if the bank has been in business for eons. The best part: They...

Amex Looks to Gain Edge As MC, Visa Do Battle: American Express has been more popular in Europe than the U.S., but that's bound to change in 2004, thanks to a recent antitrust decision allowing member banks of Visa and MasterCard to work with Amex.
December 1, 2003... Consumers can kiss those no-interest credit cards goodbye: Visa and Master-Card may be scavenging for income to pay off their burgeoning legal bills. The court decision reaffirming the anti-competitive behavior of Visa's and MasterCard's...

Picture This: Ford and Kodak Sputtering Into High-Yield Territory. Could Be.: Two old economy names are getting bandied about as potential candidates to fall, while another is picking itself up and dusting off.
December 1, 2003... Ford and Kodak are getting talked up by high-yield pros as potential "fallen angels." Fallen angels? It's not impossible. Both companies had problems over the past two years, each and every detail of which played out in the press. But...

Smart Money Has Been On Gaming This Year: Casino bonds have rewarded investors this year with impressive returns. Will Lady Luck continue to smile or is it time to walk away from gaming bonds?
December 1, 2003... Institutional investors have pushed gaming bonds up this year to the heights of the high yield universe, which is where most casino bonds dwell. While some analysts are calling for the good times to last on the basis of strong fundamentals,...

Managing Wealth Isn't Rocket Science, Or is It? It is at Webster Financial.: Bruce Wolfe, a former aerospace engineer, gave up ballistic missile boosters for bigger bucks-managing them, that is, for Webster Financial Advisors.
December 1, 2003... Webster Financial Advisors' Bruce Wolfe used to get paid to blow stuff up in the desert. At age 22, the former engineer was roaming the country with eccentric scientists testing ballistic missile booster stages. "In one test, we had an...

The Job Market Turns a Corner-Probably: Leading economic indicators show an economy that's certainly turbocharged in uncertain times. The question will be where the momentum leads, and what expectations are held by the nation's workforce.
December 1, 2003... In the first week of November all the talk of a jobless recovery seemed to evaporate as the economy reported 126,000 additions to the nation's payrolls in October. That, coupled with upward revisions to both August and September numbers, meant...

What Community Banks Should Look for in a Credit Card Program.
December 1, 2003... As we sort through the daily mail, bills are placed in one pile, magazines in another, and credit card offers are immediately ripped, shredded, and thrown into the trash. The average consumer has become immune to the endless number of credit...

The Mortgage-Backed Burn.
December 1, 2003... At the start of 2003, Wall Street economists were almost uniform in their forecast: the U.S. 10-year note yield would end the year at five percent as the benchmark rate in the benchmark market gradually trended upward on the back of improving...

Charlotte Battles Defied FDR. It Was History in the Making.
December 1, 2003... Ten thousand U.S. banks had failed in just four years, and panic was sweeping the country. But newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced this epic crisis head-on. To stem the tide of runs and failures, he took immediate and...

U.S. Banker Advertising Contacts.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... GROUP PUBLISHER Jay Berfas Thomson Media One State Street Plaza New York, NY 10004 Tel: 212.803.8690 Fax: 646.264.6800 Outside the U.S. Please contact the Publisher U.S. BANKER ACCOUNT ...