Today's News

CREDIT/DEBIT/ATMs: VISA AND MASTERCARD are making sure its no secret that they and their members are a step ahead on the potentially hot issue of consumer privacy. Each of the card associations has developed a set of privacy principles, in large part aimed at preempting potential congressional action. Page 12 FLEET FINANCIAL Group has begun offering a Visa credit card designed to benefit the Special Olympics. The Rhode Island-based bank will contribute 50 cents for every $100 of purchases made with the new cards to Special Olympics International, whose World Summer Games are now under way in New Haven, Conn. Page 12 REGIONAL BANKING: CHASE MANHATTAN introduced an advanced global treasury management system it claims is unlike any other. Deborah Talbot, head of the bank's global payment and treasury services group, said Chase Insight "will eliminate many paper-based services and bring a lot of different products onto a single platform." Page 4 THE COUNTRY's biggest thrift, H.F. Ahmanson & Co.'s Home Savings of America, has begun a push to broaden its consumer loan offerings beyond the mortgages that are its primary business. Page 4 WASHINGTON: A COUPLE of remarkably long days of deliberations on regulatory relief legislation last week gave the Washington banking community some new insights into the mix of people and politics on the House Banking Committee. Page 3 IN WHAT most likely is a first for a bank regulatory agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has decided to allow comments on a proposed regulation to be submitted via the Internet. Page 3 COMMUNITY BANKING: AGRICULTURE banks in the Upper Midwest are taking advantage of a boomlet in the cooperative business. Rural bankers say co-ops are a welcome new source of loan and deposit business - and also offer much-needed cash flow to their borrowers who are members. Page 7 CREDIT UNIONS: A GOVERNMENT plan to restrict bonuses paid to loan officers met received a mostly negative response from credit unions. A refrain in many of the 70 letters filed on the National Credit Union Administration proposal is that credit unions alone should design incentive programs. Page 10 A BILL strengthening the federal government's power over state-chartered credit unions cleared the Senate Banking Committee on a unanimous vote last week. Page 10 MORTGAGES: In home equity lending - where the traditional way of leaving a top post is still retirement - several of the industry's most noteworthy executives have quit their posts in the last month. Page 16 INVESTMENT PRODUCTS: VOWING NOT to repeat the mistakes that derailed past efforts to sell life insurance, bankers congregated in Chicago last week to learn from the few in their industry who have succeeded in this endeavor. Page 8 TECHNOLOGY: BANK TECHNOLOGY stocks mainly drifted lower last week, breaking a month- long rally that boosted many firms' shares to their highest levels in a year. Page 18 FINANCE: IN ONE OF the first court cases involving the repudiation of a derivatives contract, a federal court in Chicago has awarded more than $3 million in damages to a French bank spurned in a swaption deal. Back page