Saudi Oil IPO = Bank Fee Bonanza; Kelleher Profiled

New York Times

Investment bankers the world over are salivating at the fee bonanza that would emerge from a potential Saudi Aramco IPO.

If it went public, Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil producer in Saudi Arabia, could generate a market value the equivalent of 12 Apples, or about $7 trillion. And that's based on a 2010 estimate.

Saudi Aramco's state oil reserves of 261 billion barrels is at least 10 times larger than ExxonMobil's. And ExxonMobil's market value is about $320 billion.

The Times notes that Saudi Aramco has had past banking relationships with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.

Too big to fail, indeed.

The Times has a short profile of Colm Kelleher, who's now considered the likely successor to Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman.

Kelleher, 58, was born in Ireland, graduated from Oxford with a degree in history and is a chartered accountant. He's worked most of his career at Morgan Stanley, primarily in the areas of trading and capital markets. His most recent positions at Morgan Stanley were president of its institutional securities division and CEO of Morgan Stanley International. He's been based in London and it's unknown if he'll move to New York, now that he's CEO-in-waiting.

Financial Times

Banks are losing popularity to online crowdfunding sites in Japan among women entrepreneurs. One of the most-popular Japanese crowdfunding sites is ReadyFor?, which recently added Goldman Sachs as a consultant.

Elsewhere...

CBS News: Millennials have more education and, on average, more money than their forebears. So does that mean they're better at managing their own finances? Nope, says PricewaterhouseCoopers.

U.S. consumers born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s are heavy users of payday lenders, auto title lenders, rent-to-own products, tax refund advances and pawn shops, PwC said in a report issued Thursday.

"There's an appetite for faster money quicker without thinking of the longer-term ramifications," said Shannon Schuyler, head of corporate responsibility at PwC.

Perhaps PwC's research is simply a reflection of the grumpiness of older generations about millennials, under the general theory that these young folks think they know better but refuse to take advice from their elders.

But PwC does toss out lots of statistics to buttress its point, based on studies done at George Washington University. About 42% of millennials used payday lenders or other types of nonbank providers typically classified as predatory, or at least charging excessively high interest rates. And only about 24% of millennials can demonstrate a basic level of financial literacy.

International Business Times: Citigroup's Citibank is developing an ATM that doesn't have a screen or a keypad. Instead, you stand near this ATM and it scans the information in your smartphone to authenticate your identity. Citi unveiled the prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

St. Louis Business Journal: MasterCard has developed a mobile app for delivering groceries.

Consumers can order items directly from a Samsung smart refrigerator and have them delivered to their homes. (The article does not mention whose refrigerator, nor where it's located.)

MasterCard Labs, the credit card network's in-house R&D operations in the St. Louis area, developed the app.

The Street: Maybe it's time for some people to back away from the ledge and put away the razor wire. After all, it's only been a short time since the Fed raised interest rates.

But panic nevertheless persists that a recession is upon us, thanks to the stock market tanking. And that means banks can no longer look forward to expanding profit margins through additional rate hiles.

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