Finance

On paper, the deal was a no-brainer: a $15 billion debt financing that would net banks hefty fees and kick off a year of mega-acquisitions even as central banks tightened the spigots on their pandemic support. Yet eight months after agreeing to finance the leveraged buyout of Citrix Systems, Wall Street is now staring at a very different picture.

The Fed chair said actively selling securities will become necessary as it looks to reduce its balance sheet, but not anytime soon.

Banks including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have pulled back on financing for offices and other commercial real estate following a record burst of lending in the first half of this year. 

More U.S. consumers are saddled with credit card debts for longer periods of time, according to a survey, struggling to pay down amid high inflation and rising interest rates.

The neobank combines digital banking with community-based assistance.

Consumer spending continues to rise, but last quarter's acceleration in loan growth is starting to lose momentum, and bankers are tempering expectations about fee income. Meanwhile, deposit outflows have yet to result in strong competition for customers' money.

The average rate on variable-rate cards rose above 18% this week, the highest level since 1996, according to data from Bankrate.com. The industry has been enjoying large profits, which has caught the attention of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mike Maguire will succeed Daryl Bible as the North Carolina bank's finance chief. Maguire has been in charge of Truist's consumer finance and payments businesses for nearly two years.

A shift is underway at the Federal Reserve in how to describe neutral — the interest rate level that neither stimulates nor restrains growth — as it debates how much higher to hike.

Flow Traders and Hudson River Trading have backed Sei Labs, a crypto startup founded by Goldman Sachs and Robinhood Markets veterans that is developing a blockchain aimed at speeding up decentralized finance transactions.

The pending deal will help keep the Canadian bank's funding costs low, since Bank of the West has a strong core deposit portfolio, executives said Tuesday. BMO is sticking with its year-end timeline for closing the acquisition.

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.