Morning Scan: Deutsche Bank Weighs Future; Kanas to Retire

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Call for consolidation: Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan called for more consolidation in the profit-challenged European banking industry, just after a German magazine reported the bank had considered amd rejected a bid for rival Commerzbank. "It is undeniable that Europe's banks are stuck in a fundamental dilemma," he said in remarks prepared for delivery at a conference in Frankfurt. "We have become significantly more secure since the financial crisis. We maintain more capital and liquidity with fewer risks in our balance sheets. However, we are also far less profitable today." Cryan said the European Central Bank's below-zero-rate monetary policy has made it hard for banks to make money.

Yet Cryan doesn't seem ready to practice what he preaches. A proposed merger with Commerzbank doesn't appear to be in the cards. Instead, Deutsche Bank may be looking to get smaller, not larger. Executives at the bank plan to meet this weekend to discuss possible "dramatic options" to overhaul the bank, including asset sales. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times

Wall Street Journal

Kanas to retire: BankUnited president and CEO John A. Kanas will retire at the end of the year. He will be succeeded by Rajinder P. Singh, currently the bank's chief operating officer. Thomas M. Cornish, currently president of the bank's Florida unit will take over as COO. The Florida-based bank, one of the largest banks to fail during the financial crisis, was bought in 2009 by a group of private-equity firms before going public.

It's over – already: The partnership between Wells Fargo and Amazon, under which the bank was supposed to offer interest-rate discounts on student loans to Amazon Prime student customers, has ended just six weeks after it was announced. No reason for the termination was offered by either company.

Foreign buyers get mortgages: Higher home prices and a strong dollar mean more foreign buyers are likely to need mortgages as they buy U.S. real estate to park their money. Until recently, many of these deals have been for cash, often because many foreigners found it difficult to get mortgages in the U.S.: they're not eligible for government-backed conventional loans or most jumbo mortgages, while many banks see lending their own money as too risky since it would be difficult to collect if a borrower living abroad defaulted. Foreign borrowers get better deals and less hassles working with operating in both in their home countries and in the U.S., the paper notes.

Financial Times

Swift hacked: The Swift global payments network told its 11,000 members that hackers stole cash from several banks through Swift's network and that they need to increase their vigilance. "We have seen new cases of input fraud since we last wrote to update you on these issues," Swift said in a letter to members. "The attackers have followed a broadly similar modus operandi, but have specifically tailored every attack to each individual target." The network said it had repelled "a good number" of the attacks but that others were successful.

Visa test: Visa has invited a "small number of European banks" to test an interbank payments system that uses blockchain technology to reduce costs, speed up settlements, cut credit risk and handle regulatory and compliance matters. The project, which is being done in collaboration with BTL Group, a digital payments start-up, is designed to "reduce the friction of domestic and cross-border transfers between banks," according to an official at Visa. "Participating banks will be able to connect to the network and send funds to other banks in the network across multiple currencies."

Washington Post

Goldman the critic: Goldman Sachs's back-to-school reading list is an eclectic assortment of both old and new books ranging from a history of soccer coaching styles to a 1992 Churchill biography but "is mostly void of self-help leadership guides or complex financial tomes," the paper says. "The summer reading list is our effort to extend the dialogue beyond the bread and butter of our business to help clients discover new ideas, new people and new thinking," Goldman said in a release. The list of 14 books was put together by some of the firm's executives.

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