Wall Street Journal
Prosecutors are pursuing criminal cases against JPMorgan Chase and Royal Bank of Scotland executives for allegedly
Tim Sloan, who was made a
New York Fed president William Dudley said more work needs to be done on ending the perception that some banks are "
Square's IPO is scheduled for today. Its performance may have a lot to say about the prospects of other fintech companies. If Square stumbles, it may mean that other fintech startups will have a hard time getting rich from the public markets. The IPO market is far from a sure thing. LendingClub's shares have been pummeled as investors worry about the ability of online alternative lenders to make money.
"It's proving harder and harder to make money in IPOs," said Loomis Sayles portfolio manager Tony Ursillo. Square has proffered an IPO share price of between $11 and $13, down from the initial $15.46 price of its private placement last year. The $11 to $13 range would still place a higher value on Square than established payments concerns like Global Payments and Vantiv.
Simple and BBVA have a
"By not sucking, we will win," Reich wrote after starting the firm.
But it's not easy to have your cake and eat it, too. BBVA Compass provides Simple with all sorts of benefits that it probably couldn't have gotten on its own. Simply has more than doubled the number of customer accounts since BBVA Compass bought it, and it's increasing users by 10% each month. This is, in part, because BBVA Compass has thousands of depositors, expertise in dealing with regulators and loads of capital — all things that Simple didn't have pre-acquisition.
For many fintech startups, then, maybe they need banks as much as banks need them. "The classic narrative is the Silicon Valley firebrand who's taking on the system," Bain Capital Ventures' Matt Harris said. But in financial services, "that's just not going to be a winning narrative."
The online lender Kabbage, which makes both small business loans and personal loans, is
Financial Times
Cash (and plastic cards) are still the kings. A study by the Canadian data analytics shop Aimia found that fewer than one in 10 customers in the U.K. were "
New York Times
Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have postponed plans to sell billions of dollars of debt to support Carlyle Group's
Washington Post
The Federal Housing Administration has made it easier to qualify for a mortgage on a condo, but the new rules still may not be lenient enough to
One of the problems is the agency didn't allow single units within a building to get an FHA loan unless the entire building was FHA qualified. The FHA's Ed Golding said at a recent San Diego conference the agency is going to ease restrictions on condo certification procedures.
But outside experts say the new changes won't help much. "I'm shocked that they bothered to come out with this at all," said Natalie Stewart, president of FHA Review in Orange County, Calif. The new rules don't address the problem of the FHA not making loans on single FHA units; restrictions remain on transfer fees, which shut out large groups of condo-homeowners associations from FHA loans; and there are restrictive rules on budgets, reserves, lease approvals and more.
Elsewhere ...
Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "There Will Be Blood" is a movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis about the early days of wildcatting. The film's title was recently appropriated and modified by an attorney for a Texas law firm to describe what he projects for the energy industry and energy lenders in the coming months. "There will be more bloodletting," said Brian Barnard, administrative partner at law firm Haynes & Boone.
In other words, if you think the energy business is in trouble now,
In another bad sign, drillers and oilfield-services companies like Conoco Phillips, Chevron, Baker Hughes and FTS International have been firing workers, which does not portend well for the likes of Comerica and