US Banker articles from February 2005

US Banker archives from February 2005

Rants and Raves.(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... Amex, Visa, MC-Part II I enjoyed your commentary on American Express in the January issue ("Amex. Visa. MasterCard. Welcome to the Sandbox."). The part that Amex does not share with the media is that Visa and MasterCard are service...

Doing What's Right Trumps What's Expected: The leadership gap quotient is the difference between how a CEO behaves when revenue and earnings are up and when the opposite is true, and how that affects the organization.
February 1, 2005... Management shakeups are part of corporate America's legacy and Wall Street's fickle dynamic. In the end, someone always pays the price for not living up to the Street's expectations-or the CEO's reading of those expectations-and it's rarely the...

Privatized Accounts: Social Security Slugfest Emerging on the Hill: SIA: Firms would earn $39 billion over 75 years.(Securities Industry Association)
February 1, 2005... In the divisive battle to allow partial privatization of Social Security, which financial services' lobbyists have been quietly touting on Capital Hill, Republicans must convince five Democratic senators to vote against their own party in one...

Scene and Heard.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... "If you can count, you can tell the current social security system cannot sustain itself." BRUCE JOSTEN, evp at U.S. Chamber of Commerce "Lots of customers are loyal through inertia. And it's because you don't have a picture of their...

U.S. Mortgages: As Housing Market Leaks, Foreign Players Get Soaked: But HSBC and Amro dodge the raindrops.
February 1, 2005... The recent boom years of the American housing market were the very mirror image of a sluggish economy: With interest rates slashed, interest in refinancing and real estate speculation soared. The U.S. housing market not only provided the helium...

Hits and Has-Beens.(appointments and resignations)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... One of banking's highest-ranking, Deanna W. Oppenheimer, resigned as president of Washington Mutual's retail-banking group. She's been with the $289 billion company since 1985. A successor hadn't been named by press time, but Stephen J....

FreshInk.(Acquisitions and mergers)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... 1. The Principal Financial Group is acquiring ABN Amro Trust Services Co., the Chicago pension and retirement business that administers 300 401(k) plans valued at $3.6 billion, with more than 121,000 participants. Details weren't disclosed. ...

Investment Banking: As European Banks Flail, Americans See an Opening: Commerzbank is out and CSFB is rebuilding.(Credit Suisse First Boston L.L.C.)
February 1, 2005... As the new year takes shape and numbers once again rule the mean streets of Frankfurt and Zurich, what's left of their ambitions for global high finance and investment banking? The close of 2004 saw Commerzbank abandon the major leagues to...

Pipeline.
February 1, 2005... M&A Deals Slip in 4th Quarter Bank and thrift mergers and acquisitions declined significantly in the fourth quarter with 58 transactions announced, compared to 84 transactions in the previous quarter and 87 in the fourth quarter of 2003,...

Financial Players Step Up in Wake of Killer Wave. Will It Be Enough?
February 1, 2005... It's not yet Valentine's day, and already 2005 is off to a serious and sobering start. There was the runup to the scheduled Iraqi elections, fraught with violence, legitimacy concerns and uncertainty about whether they'd take place at all....

Noted and Noteworthy.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Forget consolidation. Florida expects a record number of new community banks this year, and you can blame entrepreneurs. County officials in Orlando alone are looking at half a dozen potential new charters involving community banking veterans....

Look Out for the Falling Greenback: Economists expect the dollar to continue its slide in 2005, which could portend another global economic crisis. And the West's favorite punching bag? Yep, China.
February 1, 2005... Despite the dollar's recent bounce, economic observers worry that if the dollar's value continues south unabated, it threatens to spawn an economic crisis like the one that rippled across Asia in 1997 and 1998. And that's prompting pressure on...

Business Strategies: The People(Soft) Vs. Larry Ellison: The contentious battle between Oracle and PeopleSoft was always about money. Now Oracle CEO Larry Ellison must convince financial clients to stick around.(chief executive officer)
February 1, 2005... The December conclusion of the Oracle-PeopleSoft saga was, paradoxically, startlingly sudden and also rather anticlimactic. Though PeopleSoft shareholders had tendered a majority of their shares to Oracle in November, signaling the takeover...

Why Bigger Isn't Always Better: Yes, it's a myth: High investor returns don't correlate to larger market share, says a recent study. Organic market growth-and the direction the bank's heading-is key.(report)
February 1, 2005... It's considered an article of faith in many banking circles: the greater the market share, the more pricing power and scale efficiencies-and profits-an institution will get from that market. Large-bank executives, eager to make their...

AD Beat: RBS Flies a Kite Stateside: Can yet another foreign big bank establish its brand in the U.S.? This Scotsman aims to find out.(Royal Bank of Scotland PLC)
February 1, 2005... Another foreign acronym is crowding the bloated U.S. financial scene as Royal Bank of Scotland brings its RBS brand across the Atlantic. Fortunately, the ads are enjoyable-and effective. The bank is running television, print and outdoor ads...

Dispensing with the Data Dump To Achieve Customer Loyalty: Bain & Co. says there's only one question that banks should be asking customers. And, no, it's not whether they'd like a toaster with that new account.(Rob Markey Jr.)(Interview)
February 1, 2005... Most banks are needlessly buried in a sea of measurements. And on top of that, they're studying the wrong customers, consistently missing the questions that matter most, says Rob Markey Jr., a partner at Bain & Co. He and colleagues have tapped...

A Phish Story.(Internet fraud)
February 1, 2005... Phishing attacks, expected to more than double in 2005, are spreading to small banks. The dollar losses are still limited, but are the attacks undermining consumer confidence? Down through the ages, con artists and scammers have always...

No Fear and Trembling At California's MCB: Mission Community Bank's founder knows about earthquakes and fancy footwork. After giving up her dream as a dancer to become a banker, knowledge of both came in handy.(Anita Robinson)
February 1, 2005... At 11:15 on a December morning in 2003, Anita Robinson felt the chair in her San Luis Obispo, CA, office lurch violently, tossing her wildly about. The founder and president of Mission Community Bank-a California native herself-knew it was the...

Banks Take Lead in Zero Down-Payment Loans: As HUD drags its feet on whether to allow low- and moderate-income borrowers to buy a home without a down payment, banks are testing the water with products of their own. Most are working.
February 1, 2005... In October, as the keynote speaker at the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals conference, Angelo Mozilo, chairman and chief executive of Calabasas, CA-based Countrywide Financial Corp., spoke out for the elimination of...

PNC Dusts Off an Old Idea: The Virtual Debit Card: A recycled concept makes a comeback, as debit transactions rise and more consumers worry about shopping on-line. But PNC is convinced the timing is right for eSpend. But are customers?(PNC Bank Corp.)
February 1, 2005... PNC Bank is rolling out a new program-based on an old idea-designed to alleviate consumers' concerns about the security of on-line commerce. The program, a "virtual debit card" called eSpend, is a recycled idea with a couple of new twists,...

Wells Opens More Doors To Foreign Trade Biz: A surge in cross-border small-business deals has prompted Wells Fargo to ally with S1 for an on-line foreign-exchange platform. Smaller banks can adopt the service under their own brand.(Wells Fargo & Co.)
February 1, 2005... International trade is growing by leaps and bounds for Wells Fargo, which hopes a Web-based foreign exchange alliance with S1 will place it firmly ahead of the curve as cross-border business banking expands. The two companies have inked a deal...

Union Bank Drops SEI to Manage Web Service In-House: Though the move is rare for a regional bank, Union decision to design a proprietary system may be savvy. Not only can the bank control costs, but it can give clients exactly what they want.
February 1, 2005... Union Bank of California is acting like a big shot. The $47 billion regional bank has brought in-house its on-line trust and custody service, taking it out of the hands of third-party wealth-management vendor SEI Investments. The move,...

Mobility of Jobs are an Urban Planner's Nightmare: The labor pool was what used to be flexible, but now jobs are moving more frequently than people. This means cities must plan to prevent what paralyzes booming communities: congestion and inner-city slums.
February 1, 2005... Don't believe everything you'll read about the job market this year. Our basic neo-classical economic models assume that workers are the mobile element in the job/labor market. The new mobility of jobs, however, has caused a shift in the...

Bridging Business and Technology.
February 1, 2005... The financial industry has changed greatly since the bubble burst. In particular, the relationship between business and its supporting technology has worsened. Executives need to recognize this, reduce its impact, and realize tomorrow's...

U.S. Banker Advertising Contacts.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... 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 REPRESENTIVES ...

Search for the Elusive SCV.(Single Customer View)
February 1, 2005... The whole notion of a single client view-the ability to access all customer-related information-is nothing new to the financial services industry. For more than a decade, companies have struggled to break down the traditional, product-centric...