Latest banking news

September 16, 2022 3:25 PM

Scroll through to see what you might have missed this week in banking, payments, credit unions and more.

Comerica plans North Texas innovation hub ...

Matt Nager/Bloomberg

Comerica announced this week that it will open a business and innovation hub in an 11-story office tower under construction in Frisco, Texas, about 30 minutes north of Dallas. One of the bank's future neighbors: the Dallas Cowboys, whose world headquarters and training center are located on the same 91-acre, mixed-use campus known as "The Star in Frisco." Comerica has agreed to lease the top three floors of the Class A+ building, where it will house roughly 300 technology, product management and front-line business employees, as well as some ground-floor retail space where it will operate a branch and a community resource center. The bank, which expects to move into the new space in late 2023 or early 2024, said it will maintain its downtown Dallas headquarters, from which the executive offices, commercial bank, wealth management, credit and other lines of business will continue to operate. — Allissa Kline

... while Oakworth of Alabama readies Charlotte office

Oakworth Capital Bank in Birmingham, Alabama, is expanding its Southeastern regional footprint into the Carolinas with plans to open an office in Charlotte in early 2023. The Central Carolinas hub will offer commercial and private banking, wealth management and advisory services. Local Charlotte banker Tim Beck is joining Oakworth to lead the Charlotte office. Beck was chief credit officer at Aquesta Bank before it was acquired last year by United Community Banks. He's also held roles at Bank of America, BB&T, First Horizon, Silverton, SouthTrust and First Horizon. — Jordan Stutts

Goldman Sachs embedded banking venture centers on payments

Goldman Sachs's latest foray into embedded banking is a partnership with a software company, Modern Treasury, to let customers embed domestic and international payments into their own products. Goldman's earlier efforts at embedded banking include its partnership with Apple to create the Apple Card and its collaboration with General Motors on applications that will work with the GM card. The companies have jointly served clients since late last year. Product teams from both companies have committed to a mutual product road map to address new client needs, tighten the integration, and offer mutual clients a unified product experience. One client of both companies, Nigel Glenday, chief financial officer at the art investment platform Masterworks, said that with the help of both companies, "our payment operations now support timely reconciliation of investor payments, irrespective of payment methods, and an integrated workflow to identify and resolve payment exceptions as they arise." — Penny Crosman

Bank of America board adds health care executive

Buildings are seen reflected on the exterior of a Bank of America branch in New York.

José Almeida, the chairman president and CEO of Baxter International, a multinational health care company based in Deerfield, Illinois, is joining Bank of America's board of directors. Almedia, a member of Northwestern University board of trustees, will hold seats on the Bank of America board's audit committee and on the compensation and human capital committee. Baxter develops and manufactures medical supplies to treat kidney disease and hemophilia. — Jordan Stutts

ATM skimmers still work, and they're thinner than ever

Cozyta - Fotolia

The cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported on his blog this week that fraud investigators have discovered card skimmers that are thinner than a dime. Investigators found the skimmers inside deep-insert ATMs — the kind that fully absorb the card before returning it to the customer. These skimmers do not attempt to siphon chip-card data or transactions, Krebs said. Rather, they go after the cardholder data that card issuers store in plain text on the magnetic stripe on the back of most payment cards issued to Americans. — Carter Pape

Bowing to queen, supermarket goes beepless

Anthony Devlin/Bloomberg

Morrisons, a U.K. supermarket chain, turned down the volume of the beeps that accompany the scanning of items at checkout, a move it said was out of respect for the late Queen Elizabeth II. But the silence caused confusion among shoppers in the self-serve aisle, who couldn't hear their own items being scanned and thought the point-of-sale terminals were out of order, according to the Leicester Mercury, a local newspaper. Morrisons, which also stopped staff announcements and music inside stores, told the newspaper it had not shut off the checkout scan beeps entirely, but had drastically reduced the sound. Other stores such as Primark, Aldi and John Lewis will be closed on Monday, the day of the queen's funeral. — John Adams

Citigroup hires veteran JPMorgan banker for U.K. deals

Citigroup Confronts Vaccine Holdouts In No Jab, No Job Mandate

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Citigroup has hired veteran JPMorgan Chase dealmaker Barry Weir as it seeks to beef up its senior ranks in London. Weir, who's known for his work on natural resources deals, will join Citigroup as a managing director on the U.K. investment banking team in late September, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg. He has more than 22 years of investment banking experience at JPMorgan, working with variety of British large-cap companies, the memo shows. Weir has advised clients in sectors including industrials, energy, metals and mining and real estate. He was also head of U.K. mergers and acquisitions at JPMorgan for a number of years. A spokesperson for Citigroup confirmed the contents of the memo, while Weir couldn't be reached. A representative for JPMorgan confirmed Weir has left the bank, declining to comment further. — Dinesh Nair, Bloomberg News

Oregon credit union OnPoint welcomes bank executive as chief legal officer

Wendy Beth Oliver.

OnPoint Community Credit Union

OnPoint Community Credit Union in Portland, Oregon, named Wendy Beth Oliver its next chief legal officer. Oliver, who according to her LinkedIn profile was most recently general counsel and chief compliance officer for Grit Financial, an earned wage access firm in Houston, will rejoin the credit union after leaving her previous role as OnPoint's vice president and general counsel in February. "We are fortunate to have her on board in this new role as we continue to build on our commitment to our members, community and employees," Rob Stuart, president and CEO of the $9.3 billion-asset OnPoint, said in a press release Thursday. — Frank Gargano

Credit Suisse loses two bankers to Morgan Stanley and BMO

A sign hangs outside the offices of Credit Suisse headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Credit Suisse Group has lost a pair of senior bankers to rivals. Daniel Cavalli, based in New York, is joining Morgan Stanley as a managing director, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked to not be identified because the details are private. Cavalli led the bank's financial institutions coverage and mergers and acquisitions groups in Latin America, his LinkedIn profile shows. He joined Credit Suisse in 2000 after two years at Lehman Brothers. Amit Melwani, a managing director covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions, is joining Bank of Montreal, people with knowledge of the matter said. Melwani did two stints at the Swiss bank since 2011 and was briefly a director of M&A for Restaurant Brands International Inc.'s Burger King, his LinkedIn profile shows. Representatives for Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and BMO declined to comment. The troubled Swiss lender has lost several bankers in recent months to firms including Truist Financial, which hired financial sponsors coverage banker Hayes Smith, and Bank of America, which hired Prescott Johnson for energy and infrastructure dealmaking. It has also offset some losses with hires including Maxence de Gennaro from Lazard. Credit Suisse board members floated the idea of giving senior bankers ownership stakes in the investment banking business, Bloomberg News reported last week. — Crystal Tse and Gillian Tan, Bloomberg News

Banc of California acquires payments and tech outfit

Banc of California in Santa Ana, the holding company for a bank of the same name, said it has purchased Global Payroll Gateway in Jupiter, Florida, and its subsidiary Deepstack Technologies for $24 million in cash and stock. The fintech's executives signed three-year contracts with the $9.5 billion-asset bank and all employees will join the bank. "The acquisition of Deepstack expands our business into payment processing and furthers our strategy to grow fee-based income in a scalable and meaningful way," Jared Wolff, president and chief executive of the holding company, said in a press release Thursday. —Frank Gargano