JPM to Settle Hiring Probe; PayPal, Visa Make Nice

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Strategic hiring: What's a few jobs among friends? JPMorgan Chase is expected to settle a probe in coming months over alleged efforts to hire the children of powerful Chinese officials and executives in state-owned firms to drum up new business. The bank is expected to pay as much as $200 million and may admit wrongdoing, though it is unlikely to be criminally charged. Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg

Pay 'pals': PayPal and Visa have struck a deal that will allow shoppers to use PayPal on their smartphones at stores and give them the ability to directly withdraw money from PayPal's apps using a Visa debit card. The deal ends "long-simmering competition" and "a year of tense negotiations" between the two firms. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

Wall Street Journal

Watch out, bankers: Amazon is taking a small step toward financial services in a partnership with Wells Fargo. Borrowers will get a break on their student loan rates if they belong to Amazon's "prime student" service, an annual membership that comes with expedited shipping and other benefits.

Decent showing: Capital One reported Thursday afternoon that its second-quarter earnings rose 9% from a year earlier to $942 million, on revenue of $6.25 billion.

24/7: The Federal Reserve is now keeping its account-services hotline open all day, seven days a week, after hackers make off with tens of millions of dollars from Bangladesh's account earlier this year.

Private equity: Goldman Sachs is launching a corporate-buyout fund worth as much as $8 billion. "The effort shows Goldman's commitment to a corner of Wall Street that many rivals have abandoned," the paper says. "But it also looks very different than Goldman's past funds, and reflects the impact of regulators, who have tried to discourage banks from risky investing."

New York Times

Ulterior motive?: In addition to the high legal bar and the challenges of proving individual misconduct at an enormous firm, is it possible the Justice Department had another motive for not bringing more cases against bankers for the financial crisis? A column written by former banker William D. Cohan explores whether officials were worried about misapplying a 1989 law known as FIRREA, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989.

Hindsight: A Johns Hopkins economist has argued the Fed could have saved Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. "After what seems an exhaustive review of a now voluminous record of transcripts, exhibits and other evidence from multiple official inquiries, Professor [Laurence] Ball concludes there is 'no evidence' that the decision-makers 'examined the adequacy of Lehman's collateral, or that legal barriers deterred them from assisting the firm,'" the paper says.

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