Home Depot Breach Affects 56M; Santander's Punishment

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Reach of Home Depot Breach: Home Depot confirmed that its data breach affected about 56 million customers, making it larger than the Target breach during the last holiday season. The home-improvement retailer also said the "unique, custom-built malware" used in the breach has been eliminated from its networks. The malware used in the Home Depot breach wasn't present in attacks on other retailers. Home Depot did not disclose the attackers' point of entry into its network. Chip and pin technology will be installed in Home Depot's U.S. stores by the end of the year.

Santander Punished: It's been a tumultuous past few weeks for the Spanish lender Banco Santander. Its U.S. auto lender has come under scrutiny from regulators, and its longtime chairman, Emilio Botin, recently died of a heart attack. The latest development is the Federal Reserve taking an enforcement action against Santander for an unauthorized dividend payment. Santander had been prohibited from paying a dividend without Fed authorization after it failed its stress test in March, but a subsidiary of Santander Holdings made a second quarter dividend payment anyway, according to reports. It's the first time the Fed has taken stress-test-related enforcement action against a bank. It's also a sign of the tougher stance that U.S. regulators are taking against foreign banks.

Wall Street Journal

Banks and credit unions are originating more high-interest, unsecured personal loans, the Journal says, citing Equifax data. The lenders are attracted to the higher yields, and are also responding to competitive pressures from the likes of Lending Club.

The expected rise in short-term interest rates should give a boost to big banks' net interest income, John Carney writes in "Heard on the Street." In a recent securities filing, Bank of America said that a one-percentage-point increase in rates across the yield curve would boost net interest income by $3.55 billion. The increases in net interest income should offset banks' losses in their securities portfolio that may come from rising rates.

Financial Times

Congress gave the Export-Import Bank a temporary extension of its charter, essentially delaying making a decision on the larger question of allowing the bank to continue permanently.

That move to England … yeah, never mind. Royal Bank of Scotland won't consider moving its headquarters south to England, now that the Scottish independence vote has failed.

New York Times

If banks get a Camels rating of 2, does that mean they can ignore all other advice, warnings and directives from their regulators? Floyd Norris asks the question in response to a federal judge's ruling that dismissed the FDIC's lawsuit against the directors of the failed Cooperative Bank in North Carolina. Regulators had warned Cooperative Bank in other ways that its lending practices were problematic, but for some reason gave the bank a passing Camels rating of 2.

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