NEW YORK - (04/05/05) -- Shares of Morgan Stanley advancedmore than 3% Monday on reports that the nation's second largestbrokerage is shopping its Discover Financial Services unit, butlater in the day the company announced it is pursuing a spin-off ofthe credit card unit, instead. The news comes a little over twomonths after Discover completed the $311 million acquisition ofcredit union- and bank-owned PULSE EFT Association. The value ofDiscover was enhanced by both the PULSE deal and last year's courtruling banning MasterCard and Visa from preventing its card issuersfrom issuing competing cards from Discover and American Express.The PULSE acquisition gave the company a relationship with morethan 4,100 financial institutions, including 1,700 credit unions.The decision to spin off Discover comes amidt increasing internalturmoil at Morgan Stanley where as many as a half dozen topexecutives have resigned over the past two weeks. The battle at thebrokerage giant surrounds the old-guard Wall Street bankers who areurging the ouster of CEO Philip Purcell, a survivor of the 1997merger between Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter, which was once ownedby Sears, parent of Discover.
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Synovus Financial demonstrated at an industry conference how it is using Microsoft's Copilot to help its staff address customers' concerns.
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The U.S. arm of Spanish banking giant Santander has hired Swati Bhatia to oversee retail banking and its digital transformation efforts. Bhatia joins at "an inflection point" for the company, which aims to be "a digital bank with branches," CEO Tim Wennes said.
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Mariya Rosberg is named Americas head of banking and financial services at Marsh McLennan's Oliver Wyman unit; startup ZayZoon raised $15 million in a new funding round; and more in the weekly banking news roundup.
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Last year, the Raleigh, N.C.-based Integrated called off a deal to sell itself to MVB Financial after bank stocks took a hit in the aftermath of the regional bank failures. Capital hopes to expand its government-guaranteed lending with the transaction.
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Once a prominent figure spurring financial institutions to engage in cryptocurrency, Bankman-Fried's downslide began with the collapse of the digital asset exchange FTX in late 2022 and hit rock bottom with his sentencing to 25 years in prison.
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But the 30-year fixed rate mortgage is still near 7%, and that remains the overhang on the housing market, Freddie Mac said.
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