Today's News

WASHINGTON

China's premier met with U.S. financial services executives, who urged him to clarify policies on foreign lending and investments. Zhu Rongji was peppered with questions about his government's stance on loan guarantees. Page 2

COMMUNITY/REGIONAL

Corus Bankshares in Chicago vowed to fight a lawsuit it says will discourage banks from lending to students. The Justice Department says Corus made fraudulent insurance claims for thousands of loans. Page 7

INVESTMENT PRODUCTS

Toronto-Dominion Bank reorganized the management of its investments unit just days after announcing an equity offering to finance expansion of the business. Page 9

A top Fidelity executive says consolidation and growing demand for convenience and lower prices in the brokerage industry are forcing back- office providers to innovate and cut costs. Page 9

NATIONAL/GLOBAL

Leading world banks have called upon financial authorities in emerging markets to meet periodically with foreign creditors to avert flights of capital. William R. Rhodes, vice chairman of Citigroup, said the proposal represents "a new architecture for crisis prevention." Page 4

MORTGAGES

seemingly innocuous television commercials from the Fannie Mae Foundation, timed to the spring homebuying season, are making mortgage executives uncomfortable.

HOME EQUITY: Household International, whose deal to buy Beneficial drew skepticism a year ago, is now riding high.

DIGITAL FRONTIERS

SMART CARDS: The part-time leader of the Global Chipcard Alliance- banking members include Citigroup, Wells Fargo, MasterCard, and Visa-is leaving U S West to be the consortium's first CEO.

At the launching last month of a digital payment system, Mondex International renewed its call for an Internet transaction standard.

TECHNOLOGY

NACHA has formulated a marketing campaign to assure the public that no year-2000 problems will affect automatic payments.

RSA Data Security has a patent on data encryption technology it says can improve the performance of smart cards and other small computing devices.

MARKETS

Fleet's Quick & Reilly unit carries hidden value for investors, an analyst says.

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