Morning Scan Cordray skirts gubernatorial talk; no more SIFIs?

Receiving Wide Coverage ...
Playing coy: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray “laid the groundwork for his possible return to Ohio politics, giving an impassioned speech about inequality and his agency’s work” at an AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati on Monday. But while “the speech took place amid building speculation” that Cordray will soon leave the agency to run for governor, he failed to directly address that subject.

“I don’t have anything to say about that,” he told reporters after the speech.

Wall Street Journal
Slipped my mind: Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley was investigated and subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing for failing to disclose earlier this year that his half-sister worked at Wells Fargo as a product management executive. An investigation by an external law firm found Dudley’s original failure to disclose the connection was “inadvertent,” adding Dudley hadn’t participated in any decisions regarding Wells.

Pouring water on the fire: Chinese regulators Monday declared initial coin offerings illegal, ordering fundraising through digital token sales to “cease immediately.” The move by China, which follows a recent warning by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it may treat the coin offerings as securities and regulate them, deals “a blow to the latest financial-markets mania” and depressed the prices of bitcoin and ether, the two leading digital currencies, the paper reports.

Financial Times
New London hire: Citigroup has hired UBS veteran Jean-Baptiste Petard as co-head of its global services unit, “a move that underscores the U.S. bank’s continued investment in London despite Brexit,” the paper reports. Petard will concentrate business and payments services “where many fintech companies are concentrating their efforts,” it said.

Board changes down under: Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which has been under scrutiny recently for shoddy anti-money laundering practices “that have dented confidence in governance” at the bank, has revamped its board of directors. On Monday Australia’s largest bank said it named Robert Whitfield, a former Westpac executive and the secretary of the New South Wales Treasury, to its board. Two nonexecutive directors will be retiring while a third member’s tenure will end in one year.

New York Times
Goodbye SIFI?: The Treasury Department is expected to issue a report next month about raising the bar or doing away with the "systemically important" label (a term which the Times uses interchangeably with "too big to fail") on the nation's biggest financial institutions. "It is unclear whether the White House will move to entirely eliminate the label, a product of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, but analysts and industry officials predict that its use will most likely be curtailed significantly," the paper reports.

Quotable
“People are hanging onto bank stocks hoping for a regulatory reprieve. But from an operating standpoint, there are obviously concerns for banks.” — Justin Wiggs, managing director in equity trading at Stifel Nicolaus, discussing falling bond yields and their negative impact on bank profits.