Today's News

CREDIT CARD issuers are becoming more interested in a customer's propensity to accrue debt, because of the profit potential. Page 14 COMMUNITY BANKING: A SMALLER rival dusted off an old TV ad campaign to take potshots at Fleet Financial's pending acquisition of Shawmut National Corp. Page 8 A PROXY BATTLE has erupted at Georgia's largest thrift company, whose compensation packages and unwillingness to sell are being challenged by a thrift raider. Page 9 MORTGAGES: A PAINEWEBBER analyst recently downgraded Countrywide Credit Industries' stock to "neutral" from "attractive," saying the shares are near a peak price and will face some difficulties. Page 10 HOME EQUITY lenders are seeing tremendous growth in their market, and they are confident that it will continue. Page 11 INVESTMENT PRODUCTS: BANCORP HAWAII, the Aloha State's largest banking company, is embarking on a major push to get more of its revenues from private banking and personal trust services. Page 12 STRIVING to more closely link their brokerage units with other retail operations, Keycorp and Meridian Bancorp have named veteran consumer bankers to manage investment product sales. Page 12 TECHNOLOGY: BANKERS HAVE been loath to put information tools at the point of maximum customer contact and systems pioneers are hamstrung by a lack of standardization, Marilyn Seymann, Steven P. Williams, and Carl A. Faulkner write in the latest installment of their series on branch automation. Page 16 SHINHAN BANK, one of Korea's largest, is replacing its mainframe processing systems with client-server technology, using data base management systems from Informix Software Inc. as its standard. Page 17 FINANCE: THE IMPOSITION of federal levies on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is again being presented as a deficit-reduction option. But credit and equity analysts say investors shouldn't lose sleep over the issue. Back page SHARES OF First Interstate, SunTrust, and Fannie Mae rose on reports that legendary investor Warren Buffett had equity stakes in the companies. Back page