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.