Morning Scan: Hackers Steal from U.K. Depositors

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

British bank hacked: Tesco Bank, a unit of U.K. grocery chain Tesco PLC, said Monday that hackers stole money from customer accounts over the weekend, earning the bank "the rare and dubious distinction of losing customer money in a cyber-attack," in the words of the Wall Street Journal. CEO Benny Higgins said about 20,000 accounts had money stolen from them. "Although the numbers are small, the incident is the stuff of nightmares for bank CEOs who are spending billions of dollars to protect their intricate computer systems from cyber-attacks," the Journal said. The paper noted banks have been hacked before, but it is rare for customer funds to be stolen. The Financial Times notes the attack "exposes vulnerabilities," while other articles ponder the implications for the bank and depositors and shareholders. The bank "temporarily stopped online transactions from all current accounts," the FT reported. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, American Banker

Improvement: Shares of Lending Club jumped more than 15% on Monday, their biggest one-day gain ever, after the company reported better-than-expected third-quarter revenues and a loss of $36.5 million, less than half of the $81.4 million it lost in the prior quarter. The marketplace lender also announced new incentives to retain buyers of its loans. The company's stock had been among the worst performers among U.S. financial companies this year, according to the Financial Times. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, American Banker

Wall Street Journal

Banks forsake vendors: Technology vendors say banks are spending less on their products and services, which is hurting growth. "Banks have in recent years opted to buy more software than build it themselves, a boon to these firms," the Journal reports. "But increasingly, some banks are outsourcing functions entirely, cutting back on their own needs, or letting contracts linger rather than shopping for tech upgrades."

Dirty words: PNC has dropped the phrase "cross-sell" from its financial disclosures in the wake of the Wells Fargo scandal. In its third quarter financial report released last Friday, the bank removed the words "cross-sell" or "cross-selling" – which had appeared in the previous quarter's report – while other references to the practice were cut. A PNC spokesman told the Journal "the public's understanding of the phrase has changed. It no longer means what we intended it to mean in the past, and we have responded by changing the words we use."

New York Times

Oil protest: Protesters trying to stop an oil pipeline near a Sioux reservation in North Dakota are targeting the banks that are lending $2.5 billion to fund the project. On Monday, 26 environmental groups sent a letter to the banks asking them to stop further loan payments on the project. "In campaigning to reduce the world's carbon emissions, environmentalists have increasingly focused on the financiers behind the fossil fuel industry, highlighting their role in financing coal, oil and gas projects," the Times said. "It is an expansion of traditional protest efforts, and it has met with some early success."

Washington Post

Bank bailout?: "Taxpayers are still bailing out Wall Street, eight years later," a story about the Home Affordable Modification Program asserts. HAMP is scheduled to stop taking new applications at the end of this year but the banks will continue to be paid, based on how many homeowners they help. Yet, according to SIGTARP, "many of the banks have repeatedly broken the rules of the program, including kicking homeowners out unfairly or making it too difficult to apply for the help."

Quotable ...

"Attacks of this scale are clearly extremely rare." — Graham Cluley, a cyber-security expert, on the Tesco Bank hack.

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