Law and regulation

Sen. Mike Crapo, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, asked the Government Accountability Office to shadow the Financial Stability Oversight Council's process for designating systemically important institutions.

On Tuesday the law firm Morrison & Foerster announced that it has hired Donald Lampe, who headed Dykema's financial services regulatory and compliance team, as a partner.

Hedge funds have beaten the FDIC in a series of legal disputes over the assets of bankrupt holding companies, exposing a serious flaw in the regulator's system for recovering value from failed institutions.

The most notable quotes from American Banker stories of the previous week. Readers are encouraged to add their own observations in the Comments fields at the bottom of each slide.

Have you ever imagined starting your own bitcoin exchange? Soon, Vancouver-based Bex.io will make that possible by deploying exchange functionality under a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Kipochi, an African online service launched this month, is looking for a way to connect the digital currency Bitcoin to M-Pesa, Kenya's widely-used mobile payments system.

There is little proof that a doubling of guarantee fees in the last year by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has brought private investors back into the mortgage market, says the FHFA's inspector general in a new report.

Sen. Mike Crapo, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, is asking the Government Accountability Office to examine the Financial Stability Oversight Council's process for designating systemically important institutions to ensure that it is transparent and fair.

Planned price increases and hints that households are looking for higher yields for their savings suggest that the flood tide of deposits could finally be ebbing.

A uniform mortgage-backed-security product, more risk sharing and help for small banks are some of the housing-finance fixes that the Mortgage Bankers Association urges regulators to make now.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau named a new chief operating officer and chief of staff, among other appointments, following a string of recent departures in its senior level suite.

Other countries are discussing implementing capital reforms that go beyond Basel III after the U.S. proposed a leverage ratio higher than the international accord, Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo said Monday.

A bipartisan commission, in lieu of a director, would encourage internal deliberation and constrain the CFPB’s ability to make politically motivated or ill-informed decisions.

The law firm BuckleySandler has beefed up its financial services practice with the addition of three heavy-hitting litigators all lured away from Dykema Gossett PLLC.

Barclays is in an awkward situation that will ring familiar to bankers in the U.S. The U.K. bank has been terminating relationships with money transmitters, including several that wire funds to Somalia, a ravaged country that relies heavily on remittances from immigrants in the West. The bank says it's uncomfortable with the risk and expense of serving these businesses in light of recent fines levied against big financial institutions for anti-money laundering lapses. But now it's being accused of starting a humanitarian crisis.

The Senate Banking Committee's Republican chief counsel and deputy staff director, Andrew Olmem, joined the law firm Venable as a partner.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is approaching supervision of debt collectors much like it did with mortgage servicers and auto lenders earlier this year, saying it plans to hold banks responsible for third-party actions.

JPMorgan Chase's leaders on Friday rebuffed questions about the widespread problems in their credit card debt collections operations — and about what they are doing to fix them.

Satirical newspaper The Onion claimed that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is a big fan of "Pacific Rim," a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters.

The CFPB is taking aggressive action against the debt collection industry, emphasizing it plans to hold banks responsible for third-party actions.