Law and regulation

Banks can help ease a severe national shortage in affordable rental properties — and make money doing it.

Opportunities abound, in affordable housing, capital raising, consumer lending and more. We aim to get you thinking about how new developments on many fronts could affect your business as you plan for the coming year and beyond.

Mike Oxley, the former U.S. congressman who co-sponsored the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley Act requiring corporate executives to vouch for company financials in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals, has died, age 71.

Dilip Ratha, an economist at the World Bank, shows how the power of a simple remittance sent from one family member to another could be magnified to improve the lives of poor people.

A former M&T Bank executive was sentenced to 39 months prison time for leading a fraudulent scheme involving about $5.3 million in small-business loans.

The Dodd-Frank Act is a burden on community banks and credit unions but regulators are struggling to quantify the costs, according to a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office.

Lawmakers are expected to debate a number of key banking provisions this year, even with the November elections on the horizon.

East West Bancorp in Pasadena, Calif., paid $118.4 million to terminate single-family and commercial shared-loss agreements with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., tied to an acquisition of a failed bank.

A federal judge is urging the parties of a closely watched pot-banking case to settle their dispute.

Recent comments by Russell Golden, chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, raise questions about the board's plans to change bank accounting standards.

A new digital currency backed by gold is billing itself as a more compliant, liquid and ultimately reliable store of value than decentralized systems such as bitcoin.

Regulators and institutions appear far apart when it comes to so-called "de-risking," in which banks drop businesses for fear of enhanced regulatory scrutiny, even while policymakers are stepping up their scrutiny of terrorist financing prevention in the wake of recent attacks.

An overhaul of money-market funds, years in the making and fiercely opposed by the financial sector, will take effect in 2016. There's little debating that the new rules will be bad for some banks, but they could also create new opportunities for small and mid-sized banks in need of cheaper funding.

A federal judge is urging the parties of a closely watched pot-banking case to settle their dispute.

"The allegations of discrimination and predatory practices raised by the reporting are obviously very concerning to the bureau," a CFPB official told American Banker.

The Bancorp in Wilmington, Del., has agreed to pay a $3 million civil money penalty to address issues tied to electronic fund transfer practices.

Bank fraud can follow you to the grave. That's what prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, said in the case of two men who worked as personal bankers at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and are accused of stealing $400,000 from inactive bank accounts.

Officials who assess how well banks lend and invest in their communities seem out of sync with the experiences of Main Street.

The Federal Reserve is looking for advice and insight into how it might improve its annual stress testing regime, but banks and industry observers say the central bank is unlikely to touch the aspect of the tests that bothers them most: its secrecy.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is charging the law firm Frederick J. Hanna & Associates $3.1 million over allegations that it illegally filed debt collection lawsuits against consumers.