New York AG Urges Banks to Limit Tellers' Data Access; GE Preps Sale

Wall Street Journal

Time to crack down on the tellers. Banks were advised to limit tellers' access to customer data and also do more to detect signs of misbehavior. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent that advice to banks in a letter on Friday; the AG's office has been investigating tellers for stealing customer data and money, an unnamed source said. In one case, a group of tellers and outside accomplices stole $850,000 using customers' stolen personal data. The AG sent to the letter to Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Banco Santander, Capital One Financial, HSBC, PNC Financial Services Group and TD Bank.

General Electric is near a deal to sell its private-equity lending unit to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The sale would include assets worth more than $10 billion and would continue GE's effort to sell off most of its GE Capital banking unit. Most of the $16 billion in loans on the books of the unit are smaller than $100 million, as it specializes in loans to midsized companies. Canada's largest pension fund is set to beat out private-equity giants like KKR and Apollo Global Management, as well as several other bidders.

Deutsche Bank's co-CEOs resigned on Sunday and shares in the company rose as a result. Anshu Jain and Jrgen Fitschen will be replaced by John Cryan, a former finance chief at UBS. Both Jain and Fitschen have been dealing with multiple problems, not the least of which were the missteps in trying to turn around the German bank. Cryan will have a difficult job, as he won't be able to implement a quick fix at Deutsche Bank, said "Heard on the Street."

PayPal's Venmo, Square Cash and other free or nearly free money-transfer services are examined. The columnist says having no costs associated with transferring money is likely good for economies and the well-being of societies.

An article looks at the Urban Institute's prediction home ownership rates will continue to decline, slipping near a 61% rate, the lowest level since records began being kept in 1965. The reason is a rise in households that don't have the income or adequate savings to buy a house. That will create more renters and a shortage of affordable housing.

Financial Times

The total legal bill since 2010 for 16 of the world's largest banks has now surpassed $306 billion, according to the CCP Research Foundation in the U.K. The fines and legal settlements covered things like the sale of shoddy mortgage-backed securities. But the era of legal-settlement costs is far from over. A separate study by KBW found that there are 264 ongoing investigations worldwide involving 46 banks.

New York Times

The estate of Lehman Brothers is set to pay about $1.3 billion to settle a lawsuit with Barclays. The payment would wrap up about six of years of legal fighting between Barclays and Lehman's trustee over the status of margin accounts, "which Barclays argued were assets that were part of its transaction," the paper says. "The Lehman estate has contended that those accounts amounted to cash that should not have been handed over to the British bank."

Elsewhere ...

The Economist: As GE scrambles to get out of its GE Capital banking business as fast as it can, there's one part of banking that GE plans to retain. The $90 billion division that finances purchases of big-ticket items like medical equity, power-generation equipment and airplanes is a booming business that GE plans to hang on to. One reason is GE manufactures all of those items and finances the purchases or leases.