Law and regulation

Kevin Kabat believes Fifth Third Bancorp can boost lending this year, somewhat offsetting low interest rates. He’d like to pursue acquisitions, though he admits that M&A activity may underwhelm again in 2012.

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.

President Barack Obama is expected to announce Wednesday that he will recess appoint Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, bypassing Senate Republicans who had blocked the nomination.

President Barack Obama is expected to announce Wednesday that he will recess appoint Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, bypassing Senate Republicans who had blocked the nomination.

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.

President Obama's recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head of the CFPB will actually do more harm to the fledgling agency than good.

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

The Federal Reserve Board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued announcements with respect to the mortgage consent orders stating that consumers who believe they were financially harmed during the mortgage foreclosure process by specific financial institutions in 2009 and 2010 can potentially receive compensation.

The Federal Reserve Board is continuing its mission to make the central bank more transparent by releasing senior officials' projections for the direction of monetary policy.

A judge in New York state court Tuesday delivered an important ruling in favor of mortgage-bond insurers in a case over mortgage-backed securities Countrywide Financial had insured by MBIA.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department would begin to collect fees from large banks on July 20 to fund the Office of Financial Research and Financial Stability Oversight Council under a proposal published Tuesday.

JPMorgan Chase’s CEO will have the misfortune of catching a significant amount of fallout from the MF Global mess.

Required by Congress to remove credit ratings from banking rules, regulators have devised a plan anchored in a Paris-based group's rankings that assign zero risk to most European government debt.

Ninety-two banks failed in 2011, well below the previous two years' totals. The list of what regulators call "problem banks" is shrinking. And the latest two bank failures were the first in nearly a month — the longest failure-free period in almost three years.

Michael J. Covatto, president of Unicredit America Inc. when the Erie, Pa. collection agency was accused of using a fake courtroom to intimidate debtors, is declining to answer questions about Unicredit's operations by invoking the Fifth Amendment.

How to handle hot deposits, when to be more forgiving of delinquent customers, why health care reform could yield new opportunities, what the heck is a transaction genome, and other things for bankers to think about in the new year.

A bipartisan bill that will allow banks to appeal examination findings to an outside arbiter aims to resolve complaints that examiners are being too tough.

The idea that small business spurs job growth is a powerful, if not biblical, force in economic theory and public policy. But what if this bedrock belief about the jobs-creating power of small business and isn't true — or, at the very least, is missing a big part of the story?

"The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth." For more than a decade, this provocative quote credited to Alan Blinder has dogged the Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve vice chairman. There's only one problem: he says it's not his.

Where did debit strategies go wrong, and where will they go next? Maria Aspan reports from the ATM, Debit & Prepaid Forum, an annual event with special resonance this time around.