Today's News

COMMUNITY BANKING: SANFORD A. BELDEN, chief executive of Community Bank System in upstate New York, is facing a lawsuit by three shareholders who want to prevent the bank's buying 15 branches and $455 million of deposits from Chase Manhattan for $37.5 million. Page 6 LOUIS F. PETRILLO, the former president of Bayshore Bank, a failed Miami institution, was sentenced to a year in prison for diverting more than $2 million of bank funds to a firm that helped the Nicaraguan Contras in the mid-1980s. Page 6 WASHINGTON: OFF-BALANCE-SHEET derivatives holdings at banks have leveled off at about $15 trillion for the three quarters through last Dec. 31, the national bank regulator was to announce today. Page 2 SIX WEEKS AFTER Vice President Gore stunned regulators with a demand that the agencies complete new Community Reinvestment Act rules within a month, the drafters swear they'll finish the revisions by April 30. Page 3 REGIONAL BANKING: J.P. MORGAN's new chairman, Douglas A. Warner, is reinstalling a regional structure 10 years after the bank reorganized and centralized worldwide operations according to products. It was a tacit admission that the product-oriented system isn't working as it should. Page 4 INKOMBANK of Moscow, with $2 billion of assets, plans to seek a license to open a representative office in New York and issue up to $30 million of American depositary receipts. Page 5 MORTGAGES: THE MONEY STORE has begun to supply smaller mortgage bankers and brokers with funds for home equity loans. The home equity powerhouse has formed two units to serve this growing industry. Page 8 A CLOSER LOOK at a proposal by the Financial Accounting Standards Board that lenders had feared would be burdensome has persuaded them they can live with it. The rule would require lenders to measure declines in value within segments of their mortgage servicing portfolios. Page 8 INVESTMENT PRODUCTS: ROBERT A. ALM, who recently took a job at First Hawaiian Bank overseeing a new retail brokerage, new mutual fund family, and an established personal trust business, has a chance to practice what he preached during 11 years as a financial regulator in Hawaii. Page 10 BANKERS TRUST, Firstier Bank, and Bank of America ran the best performing funds in a 1994 ranking of institutional portfolios by TIS/Cadence. Page 10 CREDIT/DEBIT/ATMs: BANC ONE's TravelPlus Visa has been named the official card of the American Society of Travel Agents, a leading travel association that is seeking to recapture lost commissions for its agents. Page 12 EASTMAN KODAK has joined bankers in the fight to combat credit card fraud. It recently unveiled an Image Verification System that will let credit card issuers digitally record a picture of the cardholder on the card's magnetic stripe. Page 13 TECHNOLOGY: THE NEW YORK Clearing House Association has developed PC-based software to help small and midsize banks embrace electronic data interchange. Page 15 FINANCE: MORE BANKS are relying on noncore funding to support loans. This does not bode well for growth and profitability, suggests a new report from Smith Barney. Back page CORESTATES Financial's ambitious cost-cutting plan persuaded bank equity analysts at Goldman, Sachs & Co. to give the stock an upgrade - to "trading buy" from "market performer." Back page

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER