BankThink

With a wave of mergers and acquisitions inevitable, a new set of regulatory hurdles have evolved for large financial entities and community banks alike.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Enforcement-Palooza: JPMorgan Chase may not be the only bank facing impending enforcement action. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder promised more cases — or "a series of significant matters" — related to the economic meltdown are on the way. Holder also dropped this sound bite during the interview (when asked, incidentally, about JPM): "No individual, no company is above the law. We don't investigate companies based on who a CEO is, but we don't avoid investigating companies based on who the CEO is, either." How much of a continuing about-face this represents for Holder, who essentially told lawmakers back in March that some banks were, in fact, too big to jail, is unclear. The AG offered few specifics about what "significant matters" the Justice Department had in the pipeline, including whether any prospective crisis-related cases would be criminal or civil. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to flex its enforcement muscles. Just yesterday, news broke that the regulator required hedge fund manager Philip Falcone to admit guilt as part of a settlement over market manipulation allegations. (Legal specialists tell the Journal this settlement "could become a model for future deals.") Now, the regulator has charged a former portfolio manager at Oppenheimer & Company with misleading investors, which Dealbook calls "a rare enforcement action involving the private equity industry."

The former Fed vice chair is a logical alternative to Janet Yellen and Larry Summers. He's got the central bank and industry experience, plus his confirmation would make history.

The meaning of the term "underbanked" has evolved considerably over the last 30 years, and its definition today makes little sense.

In a sit-down interview with American Banker, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray discussed his Senate confirmation, qualified mortgages, and the future challenges that the agency may face.

Basel's barely noticed, but important paper on how to measure banks' equity-investments-in-funds risk signals its strong concern with how banks are interconnected to shadow financial firms.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...JPM Déjà vu: JPMorgan Chase is having a hard time getting through the day without news of a probe surfacing. Following reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating whether the bank routinely hired the children of well-connected families in China, anony-mice told the Journal and, later, the FT that the Justice Department is now looking into whether JPM manipulated U.S. energy markets. Scan readers will recall that the bank agreed to pay $410 million to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as part of a civil settlement over energy market manipulations just last month. JPM "didn't admit to wrongdoing as part of the settlement," the Journal makes a point of noting. "It did name Blythe Masters, the bank's head of commodities, three times in the filing," the FT adds. JPM, Masters and the DOJ have yet to formally comment on the new probe. Several pundits, however, are weighing in on the recently unveiled China investigation. Both a Journal article and a Dealbook op-ed from Andrew Ross Sorkin suggest, to varying degrees, that nepotism isn't always a crime. "Given that many of the children of the elite have some of the best educations and thriving networks of contacts, it is hard to see how businesses are supposed to not seek them out, let alone turn them away," Sorkin argues. Meanwhile, the FT's Patrick Jenkins writes that while it remains unclear whether JPM committed any wrongdoing, cultural traditions cannot be used as an excuse for rule-breaking. "Regulators in China and Qatar should be rooting out wrongdoing as eagerly as western authorities — in the interest of both the banks and the future appeal of the markets themselves," he writes.

President Obama held a meeting Monday with financial regulators to discuss the implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

Executives at Evolve Bank & Trust invest in technology to handle commissions and other accounting for mortgages due to stiffer regulatory requirements under the Dodd-Frank Act.

U.S. regulators have only marginally improved upon the European version of Basel III.