Cuomo names new DFS head; UBS courting former BofA executive

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Penance, anyone?
If Wells Fargo “wants to make things right with the American public … after years of cheating its customers,” it now has a “golden opportunity to make good on its promises,” according to columnist Ron Lieber. Yet the bank is not taking advantage of it. While several large credit unions have been offering members furloughed by the federal government shutdown “short-term interest-free loans, a variety of fee waivers and increased lines of credit” to tide them over, Wells and other large commercial banks have been slow to help. For Wells specifically, Lieber says, “it could — and should — be doing more, given its stated desire to make amends for bad behavior.”

Some big banks are cutting federal workers some slack during the shutdown, “offering affected borrowers forbearance on loan payments and fees,” the Financial Times reports. JPMorgan Chase, for example, is waiving checking account and overdraft charges for customers whose pay has stopped and “has pledged to work with customers who are at risk of missing payments on home, car, or credit card loans.”

Changing times
Mastercard is removing its name from its logo and will go with its iconic interlocking red and yellow circles only, a move that “continues an effort to play down the ‘card’ in ‘Mastercard’ as new payment methods and technologies spread. It also places the company among a small group of marketers such as Apple, Nike and Target that have preferred to go by visual symbols alone.”

The U.S. is finally catching up to the rest of the world as banks are set to roll out contactless credit and debit cards this year. “The fact that tap and go payments have taken so long to hit the U.S. shows the challenges to financial innovation in one of the world’s biggest markets,” the FT writes. “The age, size, and complexity of the U.S. market has been a barrier. There are thousands of banks — compared to a handful of major ones in other markets — tens of millions of merchants, and a fragmented industry that provide payments technology. This makes it hard to settle on ubiquitous solutions.”

Wall Street Journal

New dynamic
Perhaps the result of several business deals between their two companies, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Amazon's Jeff Bezos have become "best of frenemies," the paper says. The two CEOs "have also become friendly over the past two decades, even as their business interests have at times been at odds, and despite some differences in their personal styles.” But one thing is clear: “As the relationship between the men and their companies deepened, the balance of power shifted in Amazon’s favor. The retailer’s market value — at $770 billion — now dwarfs JPMorgan’s $335 billion. The bank, used to being the heavyweight in the room, is trying to figure out how Amazon fits into its world and how to avoid becoming its latest casualty. One strategy: Be more like Amazon.”

New DFS head
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has nominated Linda Lacewell, his chief of staff, to head the New York Department of Financial Services. She replaces Maria Vullo, who recently announced she is leaving at the end of this month. As the state’s first chief risk officer, Lacewell “built New York’s first system for ethics, risk and compliance across government agencies.”

Financial Times

Back in the saddle?
Christian Meissner, Bank of America’s former investment banking chief, is being “sounded out about taking a senior role” at UBS that “could put him in line to succeed Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti. The UBS role would be a return to favor for Mr. Meissner, who stepped down from his role at BofA in September after the investment bank started to lose ground to rivals in businesses such as merger advisory. He was also unhappy after having a dispute with BofA’s top executives about the U.S. bank’s overly cautious risk appetite for deals.”

Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Stakes are high
Four former Barclays executives, including CEO John Varley, go on trial in London this week to face charges by the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office for dealing with Qatar in 2008 to try to avoid a government bailout. The “flagship case,” which is scheduled to take at least fourth months, is “one of the biggest tests” in the agency’s 30-year history, the paper says. “The stakes for the SFO, which has spent millions of pounds in ringfenced money from the Treasury investigating the case over more than six years, are high after bloody noses in other trials recently.”

Failure management
Elke König, the head of the Single Resolution Board and “the eurozone official in charge of shutting down failed banks, [who] is leading a revolution in how Europe handles financial catastrophe,” says the system “remains a work in progress” three years after it was created. “In the end, it is the bank that needs to prove to us that they are resolvable,” she says. “So we have to work together.”

Disrupter
Chetwood Financial, which recently received a full banking license from the Bank of England, is the latest fintech lender “attempting to disrupt” the U.K. retail banking market. Backed by hedge fund Elliott Management, Chetwood in November “launched what it described as the world’s first ‘dynamic loan,’ which allows customers with damaged credit histories to take out a loan that becomes cheaper over time if they improve their credit rating.” The company plans to “use data science and new technology to target customers who were under-served by big banks with innovative products.”

Quotable

“If I were a big shareholder in JPMorgan Chase, I would just show up every Monday morning with, like, pastries and coffee for Jamie, and I’d be like, ‘So you happy? You good?’ Because I think he’s a terrific executive in a very complicated company.” — Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.