Receiving Wide Coverage ...
Corzine settles: Former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine agreed to pay $5 million to settle Commodity Futures Trading Commission charges related to his role in the 2011 collapse of commodities brokerage MF Global Holdings, which Corzine headed. Under the terms of the deal, Corzine must pay the penalty out of his own pocket, not from insurance proceeds, "an unusual step that highlighted that the case was a high priority for the CFTC," the Wall Street Journal said. MF Global collapsed following a large bet on European bonds engineered by Corzine that went sour. Money was then allegedly improperly moved out of the firm. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times
Wall Street Journal
That was quick: One day after Peter Hazlewood left as the head of its financial crime-fighting unit, Deutsche Bank named his replacement: Philippe Vollot, currently its global chief operating officer for compliance, anti-financial crime, and government and regulatory affairs. Vollot, a 13-year DB veteran, will report to Sylvie Matherat, the bank's chief regulatory officer, who said in an announcement that the German bank will continue to improve its compliance "in order to ensure that the profits of today are sustainable and do not contribute to the provisions of tomorrow." She said the unit's staff increased 30% last year to 770 and the bank plans to raise it to 1,150 this year.
Senior blues: The number of people 60 and older with student loans jumped four-fold to 2.8 million in 2015 from 700,000 in 2005, according to a study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while the average amount owed nearly doubled, to $23,500 from $12,100. Moreover, nearly 40% of student-loan borrowers 65 and over are in default. Nearly three-quarters of older borrowers said the loans were for a child's or grandchild's education, while 27% reported the loan was for themselves or their spouses. Those 60-plus accounted for 6.4% of all student-loan borrowers in 2015, up from 2.7% 10 years earlier. "It is alarming that older Americans are the fastest growing segment of student loan borrowers," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said.
Why buy?: Property developers are taking the next logical step to meeting demand for single-family home rentals: they're building entire neighborhoods of them. "The new rental communities look identical to for-sale projects, with pools, fitness centers and walking trails," the Journal reports. "But they are operated like apartment complexes, with management handling maintenance, lawn care and leasing."
New York Times
Not to worry: The Your Money column looks at the recent rash of credit card sign-up bonuses that have become "so eye-poppingly large" that some bank analysts wonder "if the industry was afflicted with temporary insanity." But if you're a bank, or an investor in one, not to worry. Referring to JPMorgan's Chase Sapphire Reserve card – which this week announced it is halving its $1,500 bonus – Kevin J. St. Pierre, a managing director at Bernstein Research, said he wasn't too concerned about the bank's finances. "They are so large that they can afford to experiment," he said. "A few hundred million in any quarter is a cost of doing business, and they'll use it, learn from it and improve the product from their perspective and move on."
Quotable ...
"It used to be that if you were an adult and didn't own your own home, you were kind of a bum." – George Casey, CEO of Stockbridge Associates, a homebuilding industry consulting firm, commenting on new rental communities
