US Banker articles from December 2008

US Banker archives from December 2008

Global Transformation Aiding Discover's Growth; The company's acquisition of Diners Club International is a vital part of its global payments strategy. It's no wonder: In Japan, the Diners Black card commands a $1,200 annual membership fee.(Commentary)
December 1, 2008... Byline: Holly Sraeel, Editor-in-Chief As banks race to cover all of their payments bases, one of the more exciting players to watch is Discover Financial Services. The card issuer and payments services company wasted little time in...

AD Beat: FirstBank Highlights Its Sec***ty; The Colorado bank hopes to build on its success with twenty-somethings with an advertising campaign touting its online and mobile security.(Marketing)
December 1, 2008... Byline: Anthony Malakian It's not often a bank with $8 billion in deposits focuses an ad campaign on its online and mobile security features. But when 40 percent of that bank's growth over the past two years has come from adults aged 24...

When Boom Goes Bust; The banking industry can't fully rebound without a housing recovery; housing can't recover without banks loosening the lending strings. Throw in what has the makings of a crippling recession, and bankers in markets like Las Vegas, southwest Florida and central California, where home prices have imploded the most, are holding on for their lives. Can they ride out the storm? Can the rest of the industry?(Cover story)
December 1, 2008... Byline: John Engen The towering casinos that line the strip have long defined Las Vegas. This decade, Sin City became known as a boomtown as well, its population surging 30 percent between 2000 and 2006, to 1.8 million people. The ensuing...

Golden Pacific De Novo Has Statewide Aspirations; With its fresh capital and community focus, the Sacramento-based bank holding company believes it can successfully build a network of community banks despite a very tough market.(Main Street: Community Banking & Finance)
December 1, 2008... Byline: Anthony Malakian This might not seem like the most opportune time to open a de novo. But Kirk Dowdell, the CEO of Golden Pacific Bancorp, isn't planning to open just one bank, he envisions a whole fleet of community banks scattered...

Another Bank's UnHappy Clients Are Prime Prospects; Consumers are more likely than ever to research banks' checking account options and make a switch. That makes customers easier to lose, but it's also an opportunity to lure them away.(Consumer Finance (Checking Accounts))
December 1, 2008... Byline: Anthony Malakian Of the many lessons learned from the financial meltdown, perhaps the greatest is the value of deposits. And with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs jumping into the fray, competition for deposits is only going to get...

Climate Change Prompts Strategic Thinking; Governments are taking climate change seriously in Europe and the U.S., pushing the world's biggest banks to develop investing strategies linked to the technologies and regulations to come - groundwork that will benefit their corporate clients.(Corporate & Institutional (Climate Change))
December 1, 2008... Byline: Michael Dumiak Even given the daily fluctuations of ongoing and systemic world financial woes, climate change remains a front-burner issue - and a new political administration means that Washington's stance toward that issue will...

Death, Taxes, and Opportunity In a Down Market; In tough times, good advice can cement a lifelong relationship, something that banks hoping to build wealth management groups should keep top of mind. Just don't come across as selling yourself.(Wealth Management (Tax Advice))
December 1, 2008... Byline: Anthony Malakian At the end of every calendar year, tax, investment and succession planning are topics of intense interest for wealth management teams and their high-net-worth clients. With a hurting economy that's sucker-punched...

Transparency and Regulation are Coming to the CDS Market.(OpEd)(credit default swaps)
December 1, 2008... Byline: John Schneider, Managing director with Navigant Consulting's Financial Services practice The lack of transparency into the $58 billion Credit default swaps market, which today remains virtually unregulated, poses a high degree of...

Define Segregation of Duties.(OpEd)
December 1, 2008... A bank clerk extracts customers' personal and account information from a database and then sells that data. A production manager for a manufacturer improperly accesses the system to enter recurring service fees for a nonexistent vendor. Monthly...

FINANCIAL CRISIS: First Niagara Articulates Its TARP Tactics; CEO of upstate NY bank plans "to play offense".(Front and Center)
December 1, 2008... Byline: Michael Sisk With $9 billion in assets and 114 branches in the Buffalo, NY area, First Niagara Bank falls into that grey area between community bank and super-regional. It's exactly the size bank some say will be squeezed by the...

Scene and Heard.(Front and Center)
December 1, 2008... "Are there any acquisitions on the front burner? No. Any on the back burner? Probably not. I have this belief that anything on the horizon [will be] cheaper in future quarters." Robert kelly, CEO of The Bank of New York Mellon, during the...

RISK MANAGEMENT: Models Built on Good Times Fail in Bad; Will going back to basics and empowering CROs fix the problem?(Front and Center)
December 1, 2008... Byline: Joseph Rosta Today's economic mess has led to plenty of finger pointing, but the failure of risk management models is surely a prime culprit. As it turns out, however, a fair number of risk managers were warning about the stability...

Hank's Group Think.(Word Is...)(Troubled Asset Relief Program )
December 1, 2008... Byline: Michael Sisk Somewhere along the way, the desire to save millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure and help banks cope with the toxic mortgage assets on their bank balance sheets morphed into a taxpayer financed plan that...

Noted and Noteworthy.(Word Is...)
December 1, 2008... The Head of Bear Stearns risk management has landed a new job in what some might consider an unlikely place-the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a reminder that the revolving door between regulators and the regulated continues to spin freer...

Will Retail Deposits Be Uncapped? Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and others worry about the too-big-to-fail implications when a bank gets too big. Yet the rule limiting banks to 10 percent of retail deposits looks like history.(The Inside Track: Policy, Players and Politics)
December 1, 2008... Byline: Michael Sisk It's ironic that in an election year when Democrats have swept to power promising a stronger regulatory hand across financial services, in a year when the reality of too-big-to-fail and systemic risk has been felt...

MORTGAGES: Workout Analytics Taken to Loan Level; Banks, servicers and mortgage insurers have new choices in predictive assessment technologies to help salvage value from their distressed lending portfolios.(Fast Forward)
December 1, 2008... Byline: Glen Fest Loss mitigation doesn't quite seem the right term for mortgage loan portfolio problems these days. How about "women and children first"? RealtyTrac says foreclosures went up 12 percent in September, and were up 27...

Fall Mergers Have Yet To Yield Big Campaigns; The banking world was rocked by three mega-mergers this fall. Marketing efforts, though slow to take off, are likely to accelerate significantly in the New Year.(Marketing)
December 1, 2008... Byline: Anthony Malakian September three mammoth institutions, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual and Wachovia, were purchased by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, respectively; the ramifications for the economy at large and...