Under investigation: The U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority are investigating Barclays CEO Jes Staley for attempting to identify a bank whistleblower last year. The bank issued a formal reprimand and said it would make a "very significant compensation adjustment" to Staley's bonus over the incident. The person in question is Tim Main, who Staley hired from Evercore Partners to chair Barclays's financial institutions group. Wall Street Journal, Finantial Times, New York Times
Jes Staley, chief executive officer of Barclays Plc, pauses during a Bloomberg Television interview at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017. World leaders, influential executives, bankers and policy makers attend the 47th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos from Jan. 17 - 20. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Receiving Wide Coverage ...
Throw them out: Institutional Shareholder Services became the second proxy advisory firm in a week to advise shareholders to vote against members of Wells Fargo's board of directors. Citing a "sustained breakdown of risk oversight" at the bank, ISS Friday called on shareholders to vote against 12 of Wells' 15 board members, including chairman Stephen Sanger. It said investors should support only CEO Tim Sloan and two new independent directors. Earlier last week, Glass Lewis, another advisory group, recommended voting against six Wells board members.
What a deal: Goldman Sachs has already earned nearly $600 million on its purchase and eventual spinoff of TransUnion and is expected to make about five times its initial investment of $550 million, the Journal reports. Goldman bought the credit bureau in 2012 and spun if off three years later.
Top econ: President Trump said he would nominate Kevin Hassett, a tax policy expert and an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, to serve as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
Financial Times
Hacked: British payday lender Wonga said hackers broke into its computers and stole personal information on 270,000 of its current borrowers and former customers. The company, which initially believed that no customer data had been accessed, warned clients that some of their information had been compromised, including names, contact details and bank account numbers.
New York Times
Debt traps: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the attorneys general of Illinois and Washington are suing Navient, the biggest servicer of student loans, for allegedly engaging in predatory lending and other violations. According to the Times, the lawsuits "shed light on how Sallie Mae" — which spun off Navient in 2014 — "used private subprime loans, some of which it expected to default at rates as high as 92%, as a tool to build its business relationships with colleges and universities across the country. From the outset, the lender knew that many borrowers would be unable to repay, government lawyers say, but it still made the loans, ensnaring students in debt traps that have dogged them for more than a decade."
He should know: Craig S. Phillips, special counselor to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, is the Trump Administration's point man on what to do about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Phillips "certainly knows a thing or two" about the two federal mortgage agencies, the Times notes. He led Morgan Stanley's mortgage desk during the peak "mortgage-mania" years of 2004 and 2005, bundling loans and selling them to the two government-sponsored enterprises. And "when those loans blew up and the government sued Morgan Stanley, Mr. Phillips was a named defendant in the initial case — a case that resulted in the firm paying a $1.25 billion settlement."
The move comes about a year after rising delinquency levels prompted SBA to raise lender fees and tightened underwriting standards in its flagship 7(a) program.
Select ChatGPT users can now connect their bank accounts to the AI-powered chatbot for personal money management advice based on their financial history.
Suncoast Credit Union moved from one-time identity checks to monitoring members for the life of the account. It says fraud losses fell more than a third.
The $110 million settlement, which was mapped out last fall, requires Wells Fargo to establish a $100 million fund to provide downpayment and closing-cost assistance to eligible borrowers who live in or plan to buy a home in certain low- and moderate-income census tracts.
Whether red or blue, leaders share an affinity for battling fintech giants, as the liberal mayor is pressuring regulators to scuttle Western Union's plan to buy digital transfer Intermex, shortly following PayPal's 'DEI settlement' with the Trump administration.
Prashant Sharma, JPMorgan Payments' executive director of biometrics and identity solutions, spoke with American Banker about agentic commerce and how liability is shifting as a result of large language models.
