Finance

The Federal Reserve's balance-sheet unwind is set to ramp up this week, which means the central bank will finally begin unloading the Treasury bills it started amassing almost three years ago.

The Canadian bank, which reported its quarterly earnings Thursday, recorded $22 million in charges related to its acquisition of First Horizon. Executives say they still expect the deal to close no later than January.

Net income at the Toronto-based bank dipped by double digits during the fiscal third quarter. But the company's U.S. operations, including City National Bank in Los Angeles, fared better.

The Canadian banking giant reported a 22% increase in loan balances, with the largest contribution coming from the United States. The surge in lending helped to compensate for weakness in debt and equity issuances.

Directors at two of the Federal Reserve's 12 regional branches favored a 100-basis-point increase in the discount rate in July, minutes of discount-rate meetings show.

U.S. central bankers offered divergent signals over the size of the next interest rate hike, with St. Louis's James Bullard urging another 75-basis-point move while Kansas City's Esther George struck a more cautious tone.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the fragility of complex global supply chains. Bankers say they are hearing from more U.S. clients who want to change that by moving manufacturing and supplier operations closer to home.

BankTech Ventures, which is the product of five firms including two community banks, finds fintechs that its bank partners could work with and invest in.

An account of the debate at the Federal Reserve's July policy meeting, set to be published after two weeks of whiplash on Wall Street, will probably offer clues as to what would push the central bank to go big with tightening yet again in September.

Funding constraints are a "business problem that we need to address," CEO Dave Girouard said. The online consumer lender has seen a significant drop in demand for its loans from banks and investors.

Goldman Sachs Group has extended a $150 million credit line to the Mexican startup Clara, which lends to corporations and helps manage their spending, the latest Latin American fintech to receive support from the New York-based banking giant.

A federal judge in New York vacated the guilty plea of a former Deutsche Bank trader who admitted to conspiring with others to manipulate the Libor interest rate benchmark, after an appeals court overturned the convictions of two of his ex-colleagues earlier this year.

The San Francisco fintech collected $1.6 billion in deposits during the second quarter after buying a small bank earlier this year. Though SoFi pays relatively high rates to its depositors, CEO Anthony Noto said the company's funding costs are far lower than they were before the bank acquisition.

The three-month London interbank offered rate for dollars climbed to a nearly 14-year high as traders brace for steady interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, backing away from speculation the central bank will ease up as the economy shows signs of cooling. 

Toronto-Dominion Bank is looking to bolster its stateside capital markets business with the acquisition of Cowen. The deal comes even as the Canadian banking giant awaits approval of another merger that would make it a top-six U.S. bank.

Robinhood Markets cut almost a quarter of its workforce in a broad reorganization after a punishing first year as a public company.

The Biden administration is poised to put its stamp on the banking regulatory landscape, but there are few slam-dunk solutions that will satisfy both the industry and a vocal Democratic base.

The digital commercial bank has been fleshing out its business lines and technology over the past year. Its new capital raise will help further those efforts.

The last time inflation burned hot, consumers could put money in the bank and watch it grow like the prices on store shelves, easing much of the pain. Not this time — and that’s stoking profits for U.S. lenders.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and other big-bank chief executives have been speaking about how they plan to manage higher capital requirements following the Federal Reserve’s recent stress tests.