George Yacik

Wall Street JournalDismantling Dodd-Frank: Rather than fully repealing the Dodd-Frank act, Donald Trump's transition team is instead looking at dismembering the parts of it that "Republicans find most objectionable," according to the Wall Street Journal. One part they want to jettison is the Financial Stability Oversight Council's authority to designate large nonbanks as "systemically important." Another priority is overhauling Title II, which gives regulators the authority to take over a failing bank and liquidate it rather than bailing it out.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Goodbye Dodd-Frank: President-elect Trump's transition team said it would dismantle the Obama administration's signature post-crisis financial reform law. Republicans are "salivating over a wish list of Dodd-Frank changes that until recently stood little chance of avoiding President Barack Obama's veto pen," the Wall Street Journal said. "The lineup includes everything from regulatory exemptions for community banks and regional banks to a new regime for insurers and asset managers to curbs on the federal government's influence over consumer-finance products such as mortgages and payday loans." A note on Trump's transition website said the incoming administration would replace the law "with new policies to encourage economic growth and job creation," without providing specifics.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Winner and losers: Small and medium-size banks are likely to be the biggest winners in a Donald Trump administration. Big banks? Not so much. "One thing investors can likely be confident in is that substantial deregulation is coming for smaller banks," the Wall Street Journal said. There is already a bipartisan consensus that smaller banks are overly burdened by Dodd-Frank regulations, while there are several proposals that would raise the threshold for annual stress-testing by the Federal Reserve to $250 billion of assets from $50 billion.

Breaking News This Morning ...Trump triumphs: Global financial markets dropped sharply in the initial reaction to Donald Trump's unexpected victory in the U.S. presidential race. Stocks in Asia and Europe dropped sharply, bond prices fell and the Mexican peso plunged, but gold prices jumped higher. The Republicans held onto their control of both houses of Congress. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times

Receiving Wide Coverage ...British bank hacked: Tesco Bank, a unit of U.K. grocery chain Tesco PLC, said Monday that hackers stole money from customer accounts over the weekend, earning the bank "the rare and dubious distinction of losing customer money in a cyber-attack," in the words of the Wall Street Journal. CEO Benny Higgins said about 20,000 accounts had money stolen from them. "Although the numbers are small, the incident is the stuff of nightmares for bank CEOs who are spending billions of dollars to protect their intricate computer systems from cyber-attacks," the Journal said. The paper noted banks have been hacked before, but it is rare for customer funds to be stolen. The Financial Times notes the attack "exposes vulnerabilities," while other articles ponder the implications for the bank and depositors and shareholders. The bank "temporarily stopped online transactions from all current accounts," the FT reported. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, American Banker

Breaking News This Morning ...HSBC reports: Shares of HSBC jumped 4% Monday after the bank said its main capital ratio rose to 13.9% at the end of the third quarter from 12.1% at the end of June, raising hopes of a dividend increase. Still, it was hardly a great quarter for the bank, as it reported a $204 million net loss versus a $5.23 billion net profit a year earlier. The results included a $1.7 billion charge for selling its Brazil business. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

Receiving Wide Coverage ...More lumps: It was another bad for Wells Fargo. Following a quiet period, the bank disclosed Thursday it is in talks with federal and state prosecutors, including the U.S. Justice Department, over potential abuses related to residential mortgages, which would be unrelated to the phony accounts scandal in its retail banking unit.

Wall Street JournalSeeking retail: Marketplace lenders, rebuffed by institutional investors who stopped buying their loans, are hoping retail investors will provide a more permanent source of capital. Several new funds allow retail investors to buy into the business. Investors are attracted by loans that yield over 6%. But there's a catch, warns the Wall Street Journal: "They might find themselves locked into loans due to the illiquid structure of these funds, even as they shoulder fees that are high relative to other investments."

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Another hit: Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $50 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in which it was accused of overcharging homeowners for appraisals ordered after the borrowers defaulted on their mortgages. The plaintiffs allege they were charged $95 to $120 for a service that cost the bank $50 or less. Under the proposed settlement, Wells will mail checks, averaging $120 each, to more than 250,000 customers whose home loans were serviced by the bank between 2005 and 2010.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Move over bitcoin: Speculators drove up the price of a single unit of Zcash – a new virtual currency that was built to be all but untraceable – to over $1,000 on Monday, a few days after it was introduced. The online currency, developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins and MIT, uses advanced cryptography that enables Zcash "to be sent around the world essentially without a trace, unlike Bitcoin." Price volatility aside, Bloomberg offers a smart take on why anonymity is important for a currency's fungibility.

Wall Street JournalSoFi to sell insurance: Marketplace lender SoFi, which got its start in 2011 refinancing student loans and has since expanded into mortgages and other financial products, is now gearing up to sell life insurance. The San Francisco-based company obtained a license in its home state in September to sell insurance on behalf of Protective Life Insurance, a Japanese-owned company that had $767 billion of insurance in force at the end of last year. SoFi has since obtained licenses in several other states, according to the Journal.

Breaking News This Morning ...UBS profits fall: Unlike other large international banks, which have mostly been reporting better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter, UBS reported its net profit dropped more than 60%. Net profit fell to 827 million Swiss francs from 2.1 billion francs in the same quarter last year. Analysts were expecting 945 million francs. Last year's figure was inflated by a large one-time tax benefit. The Swiss bank said it continued to experience "client risk aversion" as well as the effects of low and negative interest rates that reduce revenue.

Breaking News This Morning ...Deutsche Bank reports: Deutsche Bank reported a profit of €278 million in the third quarter, compared to a loss of €6.02 billion in the year earlier quarter. Analysts had been expecting another loss. The big German bank said it was making progress on turning around its business even as it seeks to negotiate a reduced penalty with the U.S. Justice Department to close a probe related to mortgage securities. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times

Receiving Wide Coverage ...OCC seeks data: The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has sent formal letters to large and regional banks it regulates seeking information about their sales practices and incentive-compensation plans following the Wells Fargo scandal. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Santander USA were among the banks getting letters. Comptroller Thomas Curry told the Senate Banking Committee last month the regulator will "review the sales practices of all the large and midsize banks the OCC supervises and assess the sufficiency of controls with respect to these practices."

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Court hears SIFI appeal: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard arguments from the federal government on Monday that MetLife is a "systemically important financial institution" and requires stricter regulation. The Financial Stability Oversight Council voted in December 2014 that the insurance company was a "SIFI" but was overruled by a U.S. district court judge earlier this year. The FSOC is now appealing that decision. "Beyond issues related to MetLife directly, the case holds broader significance," the Wall Street Journal commented. "The ability to bring large financial companies such as MetLife under tougher rules was an important piece of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul. The law created the council to … tag financial companies for stricter oversight if it determined their failure could put the broader economy at risk." Wall Street Journal, American Banker, New York Times

Breaking News This Morning ...Discount brokers to merge: TD Ameritrade is buying rival Scottrade for $4 billion. The combined company will have $944 billion in client assets and execute 600,000 client trades a day. TD says the merger will enable the two companies to cut costs by $450 million a year. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

Receiving Wide Coverage ...More pressure on Wells: Two Democrat senators, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, asked Wells Fargo's chairman if the board had sufficiently questioned Timothy Sloan about his knowledge of the bank's phony accounts scandal before appointing him chief executive officer. "It is difficult to believe that he had no knowledge of or bears no responsibility for the actions of thousands of Wells Fargo employees creating fake accounts," the senators' letter to Wells Chairman Steven Sanger said. "We continue to have questions about who is being held accountable at Wells Fargo."

Receiving Wide Coverage ...More trouble for Wells: The California Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Wells Fargo to determine if bank employees engaged in criminal identity theft and false impersonation to open accounts for customers without their permission. "There is probable cause to believe that employees of Wells Fargo Bank unlawfully accessed the bank's computer system to obtain the PII [personally identifiable information] of customers," the state's affidavit said. "The bank's employees then used the unlawfully obtained customers' PII to commit false impersonation and identity theft by opening unauthorized accounts, credit cards, and various other products that resulted in the accumulation of fees and charges for Wells Fargo."

Breaking News This Morning ...Morgan Stanley beats estimates: Morgan Stanley reported a third quarter profit of $1.6 billion, or 81 cents a share, up 57% from $1.02 billion, or 48 cents a share, in the year ago period. That easily beat the median Street forecast of 63 cents. Revenue rose 15% to $8.91 billion from $7.77 billion, also beating analysts' estimates of $8.17 billion. As with its peers on Wall Street, which reported earlier, the bank's results were helped by a rebound in securities trading. Return on equity jumped to 8.7%, up from 5.6% a year ago. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

Breaking News This Morning ...Goldman's earnings soar: Goldman Sachs's third quarter earnings jumped 47% versus the year-ago period as trading revenue rose 17%. The bank earned $2.09 billion, or $4.88 a share, easily beating analysts' estimates of $3.82 a share. A year earlier it earned $1.43 billion, or $2.90 a share. Revenue rose 19% to $8.17 billion from $6.86 billion, well above Street forecasts of $7.42 billion. Return on equity climbed to 11.2%, up from 7% in the year-earlier quarter and the first time the ratio exceeded 10% since early 2015. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times