Law and regulation

William B. Harrison, Jr., the former Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase and an outspoken advocate for large banks, says a big bank breakup won't happen — but admits that he's surprised by how much support there is for the idea.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's office reached an agreement with a Hutchinson, Kan.-based collection agency that requires the collector to stop trying to collect on illegal payday loan debt in the state.

Like the bankers who hope to open shop in Lancaster, Pa., startups need underserved niches to sway regulators to unfreeze new-bank activity.

Regulators reviewing AML rules could learn a thing or two from mall cops, says McGladrey’s Tyrone Beasley.

Fannie Mae executives are due this week to release the company's earnings report for the last quarter of 2012, a filing delayed by an unanticipated problem: The Washington-based mortgage financier is making money and expects to remain steadily profitable.

As the U.S. adopts the EMV smart-card standard, banks must address their own needs, such as replacing the transaction switch of their payment routing systems, according to Acquirer Systems of Dublin, Ireland.

Human enterprise is powered by financial resources and expertise. Banks truly can help people in all walks of life accomplish what they set out to do.

Public frustration has been mounting over the lack of high-profile criminal prosecutions in the wake of the financial crisis here in the U.S. But the same cannot be said abroad. Take Iceland, for example.

William Harrison, Jr., the former Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase and an outspoken defender of large banks, says forced breakups are not in the cards.

State regulators in Colorado have filed fraud charges against the former chief executive of Bank of Choice.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's expanded complaint database is leading to better response times, but the reputational risk of publicizing disputes is causing concerns.

Limiting the number of overdraft fees could cause consumers to miss important payments, be denied necessities and wind up with negative information on their credit reports.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Thursday a massive expansion of its consumer complaint database. It will be nearly 5 times larger, making it the biggest public collection of financial consumer complaints submitted to a federal regulator.

More states have introduced bills that would prohibit retailers from adding surcharges to credit card transactions. Few, if any, actually do so, but an outright ban could further weaken their negotiating power with Visa and MasterCard.

Never before have Washington's bitter bipartisan battles created a more contentious environment for would-be financial regulators who make their way up Capitol Hill seeking Senate approval. That's the popular notion, anyway. In truth, the Congressional approval process has long been fraught for financial regulators, as the following examples illustrate.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch launched two new software applications designed to address Dodd-Frank Remittance Regulation 1073, which establishes a new regulatory framework for cross-border payments.

Defendants in a collection operation agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges after allegedly misleading consumers into paying unnecessary fees and falsely threatening consumers with lawsuits.

Mackinac Financial (MFNC) in Manistique, Mich., has received regulatory approval to buy back nearly two-thirds of the preferred stock it issued under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

William Harrison, former chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is "very happy" with the bank's current position and confident the fallout from its London Whale trading losses will blow over.

William Harrison, former chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is "very happy" with the bank's current position and confident the fallout from its London Whale trading losses will blow over.