US Banker articles from February 2007

US Banker archives from February 2007

This month.(Editorial)
February 1, 2007... 24 Cover Story: Keeping the Faith When Zions Bancorp bought Amegy for $1.7 billion in late 2005, investors squawked at the high price. Today, it's clear that price was a bargain. That kind of banking savvy has helped CEO Harris Simmons...

Hold the Phones: Mobile Commerce's Here: That a Tupelo bank was the first to cut a deal with Firethorn speaks to the ubiquity of cellphones and the likelihood that consumers will use them for banking.
February 1, 2007... The debate over when, or if, mobile banking would take off came to a hard stop in November when BancorpSouth, an $11.9 billion-asset institution in Tupelo, MS, went live with a pilot program of its mobile-banking and payments application...

Philanthropy: BofA, RBC Offer The Gift of Giving: Even for the bajillionaire with everything.(Bank of America )
February 1, 2007... Bank of America is the latest institution to give the gift of giving-and make its customers feel like philanthropists. Later this year, Bank of America will give its high-net-worth customers gift certificates, worth $500 each, via...

Scene and Heard.
February 1, 2007... "We invest in sponsorships to drive shareholder value... not just because it's fun." -Ray Bedman, head of sponsorships at BofA "You don't want the kids to be in their 30s and 40s and have never met the [family] advisors." -Howard...

Marketing: Affluent Asian Americans Elusive for Some Banks: A group with $400 billion in buying power.
February 1, 2007... While a number of banks, like Los-Angeles-based Nara Bancorp and Wilshire Bancorp, were created to sell predominantly to Korean Americans or Chinese Americans, other banks in other parts of the U.S. have struggled to make the Asian American...

Hits and Has-Beens.(appointment)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Citigroup has named Robert Druskin as COO, reporting to chairman and chief executive Chuck Prince. Druskin had been president and chief executive of Citigroup corporate and investment banking. Michael Klein and Thomas Maheras are succeeding...

Fresh Ink.(acquisitions)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... 1. Huntington Bancshares will buy Sky Financial Group for $3.6 billion in a stock-and-cash deal. Huntington expects the deal to offer annual cost savings of $115 million. The deal, which creates the 24th largest bank, strengthens Huntington's...

Financial Execs See Modest Growth In 2007, But Fret Over Rising Rates.
February 1, 2007... Financial professionals are cautiously optimistic about economic growth in 2007, according to a new survey by the Association for Financial Professionals in Bethesda, MD. Forecasting modest growth for the year ahead, respondents expect their...

Noted and Noteworthy.(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Every 31 seconds, someone who speaks little if any English enters the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. Citigroup is responding to this dilemma by tapping Language Line Services, which allows consumers to dial one number and, through an...

A Bogeyman Rises in Europe: Set for November 1, the financial instruments directive is supposed to make the markets integrated, consistent and transparent. But it's stirring up a great fear of the unknown.
February 1, 2007... The MiFID, the Markets in Financial Instruments directive set to become law across the securities markets of the 27 European Union nations on November 1, has so far inspired a singular emotion among investment bankers, asset managers and...

Corporate Payments: Double E-Signatures Double the Security: A double-digital signature pilot from Citigroup and IdenTrust may prove a turning point in the quest to ease corporate treasury headaches and expand the transaction banking business.
February 1, 2007... About 150 global companies with multiple banking relationships have been drawn to the SWIFT network to interact with their banks, utilizing both SWIFT's accessibility and public key infrastracture-based security standards. But those...

How to Win Fans and Influence Consumers: Banks are funneling more marketing dollars away from TV commercials and direct mail into sports sponsorships. But how do they turn fans into customers?
February 1, 2007... When Citibank announced a blockbuster 20-year deal recently to be the official bank of the New York Mets, which includes naming rights to Citi Field stadium, a lot of fans were agape at the $400 million price tag. But sports marketing experts...

AD Beat: Does 'Rewarding!' Mean 'Effective!' or 'Annoying?': Citi's ad campaign featuring Victor and Roman may be short-lived but it had fans and foes. And it's unusual for a bank to take on material that's so risky. Was it worth it?
February 1, 2007... One can't deny Citi is a risk taker with its ad messages. But few banks could put up with the backlash from Citi's quirky "Victor and Roman" ads that proclaim the bank's rewards program is "rewarding! Very, very rewarding!" Designed to...

Smartest Guy in the Room: Harris Simmons has transformed a once-small bank with Mormon roots into a top regional performer in the West. But Zions Bancorp is only part of the story. Heading up the biggest bank in Utah-ground zero for the credit union and ILC debate-has helped make Simmons an industry leader. Bring it on.
February 1, 2007... When Zions Bancorp bought Houston's red-hot Amegy Bancshares in late 2005, the groans from investors were audible. At a price of $1.7 billion, or 23 times earnings, CEO Harris Simmons was overpaying, some squawked. To others, the promised cost...

Still Smarting From Flat Yield Curve, Startups May Sell Out in '07: De novos have had to be more than nimble in 2006, and only the lucky ones will survive this year. But the luckiest may be those that find a buyer-quickly.
February 1, 2007... The yield curve inverted last summer, taking with it what sunny outlook there was for the nation's startup banks. Adversity doesn't foretell failure for new banks, of course, but when the cost of funds is higher than the yield on long-term...

Enough With the Hidden Fees, Already! Come Clean.: When there's more information about a box of cereal than the fees associated with a health savings account, something's wrong. Competition will remedy that problem-eventually.
February 1, 2007... Health savings accounts have a great long-term prognosis in the U.S. healthcare system. But according to various industry sources, there is still one thing that keeps them from taking off: a lack of transparency about setup, transaction and...

Are Small Banks Reevaluating A Big-Bank Technique?: Scoring small-business loans is often believed to be unnecessary at the community bank level, especially if the lender and applicant know each other. But it may yet be valuable for credit quality.(Survey)
February 1, 2007... Credit scoring small-business loans has a long way to go at community banks. A recent Small Business Administration study indicates that 53 percent of banks use no credit scoring at all when making loans to firms with under $3 million a...

'Once Upon a Time, There Was a Very Rich Family...': Wealth managers can be instrumental in helping parents teach their children about the value of money-and managing for optimum portfolio longevity. The key? Starting early.
February 1, 2007... They're young. They're affluent. And they don't know the first thing about managing money. They're the children of first-generation wealth, and chances are their parents haven't broached the subject of their family's finances, let alone taught...

And Now for the Big Political Headache: Iran: Most of the Middle East is enjoying a booming economy, despite the three-year incursion in Iraq. But as President Bush fields increased criticism over the invasion, neighboring Iran remains in flux.
February 1, 2007... Against a backdrop of a healthy economy in most of the Middle East-ongoing violence in Iraq and the December 30 execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein aside-one of the biggest U.S. policy questions that remain is Iran. The...

Driving Growth Through Marketing.
February 1, 2007... Growth remains a top concern in banking, with many looking to marketing to be a key driver. While marketing can be a successful tool, it also can be a very expensive failure. Its impact is often unknown. Marketing is hardly new to banks....

Strategic Planning in Volatile Industry Conditions.
February 1, 2007... Banking industry executives struggle with strategic planning during volatile industry conditions. Devising sound strategies that accommodate the unknowable can be frustrating. To quote Yogi Berra, "the future ain't what it used to be." ...