Back in Saddle
Two former sell-side analysts have landed back in the business after being absent for a spell.Robert Lacoursiere joined Banc of America Securities on Monday as a senior equity analyst. He will cover specialty finance and mortgage companies.
Mr. Lacoursiere was a vice president in Capital One Financial Corp.'s strategic planning group. Earlier he had been an analyst with Lehman Brothers and Bear, Stearns & Co.
Capital One hired him last fall after saying it wanted to transform itself from a monoline credit card company into a more diversified consumer financial services firm. It has yet to do any deals that would fulfill that ambition, though last month it got bank holding company status, which would allow it to go after more consumer deposits, possibly by acquiring retail banks.
Capital One would not discuss Mr. Lacoursiere's departure Thursday.
Banc of America Securities now has eight analysts on its finance research team.
The Bank of America Corp. unit said Mr. Lacoursiere was unavailable for an interview this week.
Also on Monday, Tom Monaco joined Moors & Cabot Inc. as a senior vice president and a senior equity analyst in New York. In a telephone interview, he said he will cover large-cap, superregional, and money-center banks for the Boston company.
Mr. Monaco, who has covered bank stocks for 10 years, most recently had worked at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. for two and a half years. However, he said he took some time off this summer to figure out what he wanted to do. He also spent some time trekking in Asia before taking his new job.
Moors & Cabot now has four bank analysts and will further expand its research team, he said.
Bum Rap?
A song on the new Beastie Boys album obliquely refers to, of all things, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data collection.On the track "Right Right Now Now," Adam Yauch raps: "I went to get a loan and they asked my race/I wrote down 'human' inside the space/It's a disgrace that they try to debase/It ain't the bank's damn business how my lineage trace."
Mr. Yauch (who, like his bandmates, is white) may not be aware that lenders are required to ask about the applicant's race and ethnicity for the purpose of reporting HMDA data to the Federal Reserve.
A call to the Beasties' label, Capitol Records Inc. in Los Angeles, was not immediately returned.
Banks are not required to get an answer, but if the applicant refuses to give one during a face-to-face interview, the loan officer must guess - a longtime head-scratcher for lenders.
On Jan. 1 the questions also became a requirement for applications taken over the phone, according to Jeffrey P. Naimon, a partner at Buckley Kolar LLP in Washington. The guessing is not yet required of phone reps, but Mr. Naimon said it may eventually be, considering consumer activists' complaints of racial discrimination based on voice.
"I would hate to try to train someone" on how to make such guesses, he said.
The Beasties' album "To the 5 Boroughs" reportedly received platinum certification this month from the Recording Industry Association of America, meaning more than 1 million copies have been shipped.
From SEC to B of A
To help it stay on the right side of securities rules, Bank of America Corp. has hired a senior federal official who oversees the mutual fund industry.Cynthia M. Fornelli will join the Charlotte company Sept. 27 after she steps down as the deputy director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's division of investment management.
She will move to Charlotte and have the somewhat unwieldy title of securities regulation and conflicts management executive. She will report to B of A's compliance chief, Charles Bowman.
Ms. Fornelli has been involved in the SEC's efforts to reform the nation's mutual fund industry. That effort followed allegations that B of A and other mutual fund companies helped some clients engage in improper or illegal trading of fund shares.
In March, B of A and FleetBoston Financial Corp., which it acquired April 1, agreed to pay $675 million of fines and restitution to settle state and federal investigations of its mutual fund business.
B of A also has faced regulatory scrutiny in other areas. Earlier in March it paid a $10 million fine for record-keeping violations uncovered in an SEC investigation of its San Francisco trading operations.
Ms. Fornelli will help B of A as it tries to rebound from those regulatory troubles.
