President Obama on Wednesday appointed Richard Cordray as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau through a recess appointment, dismissing efforts by Republicans to prevent such a move.

Jerome Selitto has resigned as president and chief executive of PHH Corp., Mt. Laurel, N.J., and has been replaced by the company's chief operating officer Glen Messina.

Despite improvements in the job market and low mortgage rates, Federal Reserve officials seem disappointed that their efforts to perk up housing are having little impact, according to minutes of the central bank's December monetary policy committee meeting.

Mortgage applications fell almost 4% for the holiday week ending December 30, according to new figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The decline is calculated on a sequential basis.

While some of us were shopping for loved ones during the holidays, some banks were shopping for acquisitions.

Mission Community Bancorp in San Luis Obispo, Calif., has repaid more than $5.1 million in federal aid it received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Many companies still cling to time-sapping policies of checking transactions manually for mistakes and abuse. That is changing as more commercial-card issuers offer card-auditing programs designed to catch errors and variations from corporate spending policies automatically.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday sharply denounced President Obama's recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bancorp announced Wednesday a secure payment product that turns mobile devices, such as cell phones, into chip-card payment terminals.

InteliSpend Prepaid Solutions announced Wednesday a Visa-branded prepaid corporate card as an alternative to traditional corporate credit cards.

If Yaron Brook, the president of the Ayn Rand Institute, had his way, the next U.S. president would be former BB&T Corp. Chief Executive John Allison.

SVB Financial Group in Santa Clara, Calif., is expanding its banking unit to Arizona by opening an IT and operations facility in Tempe this year.

The credit card industry's total revenue fell to $154.9 billion in 2011, as borrowing grew sluggishly and issuers struggled to overcome regulatory restrictions, according to advisory firm R.K. Hammer.

Yahoo Inc. named dark-horse candidate Scott Thompson, the president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal division, as its new chief executive.

As 2012 begins, the California Department of Real Estate is still warning consumers to be wary of promises for loan modification, mortgage relief and foreclosure rescue scams as fraudsters to continue prey on vulnerable, financially stressed homeowners.

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A number of analysts and attorneys are convinced that smaller banks will feel the effects of new rules associated with the Dodd-Frank Act.

Publicly traded REIT Two Harbors Investment Corp. is laying the groundwork for a $200 million jumbo MBS deal, partnering with Barclays Bank PLC.