Receiving Wide Coverage...
Credit Suisse Shake-Up: Credit Suisse has switched around top management in its investment banking and Asia-Pacific divisions. The investment bank now has three leaders: Ga'l de Boissard and new additions Jim Amine and Tim O'Hara. The triple-threat lineup suggests that Credit Suisse isn't looking to slim down its investment banking division anytime soon, according to the Financial Times. Credit Suisse also appointed Helman Sitohang, the head of its Asia-Pacific investment bank, as chief executive of that region. The Wall Street Journal says Sitohang's appointment is a "reflection of recent successes in Asia such the underwriting of the massive initial public offering of Alibaba ambitions for further growth in countries like Indonesia." The New York Times sticks with the facts from the news release.
Wall Street Journal
Big banks' securities trading picked up in the third quarter, "affirming arguments by Goldman and some of its peers that the slump was driven more by a temporary pause in client activity than a Wall Street permanently hemmed in by new regulations on bank capital and risk-taking." October is looking good for trading too, and a JPMorgan Chase investment bank executive predicts that the trend will continue into next year as banks and money managers become more at ease with the ins and outs of new rules.
New York Times
How healthy are Europe's banks? We'll know more when the European Central Bank releases the results of its tests next weekend, but industry observers have their doubts. While the tests are an "attempt to restore confidence" in the banking system, the paper notes that investors may get skittish if banks have to act quickly to deal with bad loans.
The rise of personal data markets is bad news for consumers, according to a Times op-ed by law professor Frank Pasquale. Data miners and brokers are selling information about people's mental health histories, medical conditions and shopping habits to banks and employers looking to vet customers and job applicants. This is bad news for three big reasons, according to Pasquale: the information is often inaccurate, people have no way to correct it since they don't even know they're on the lists, and most of the data is none of anybody else's business anyway. Pasquale says the best recourse is to update privacy protection laws and better regulate the data brokerage industry.
Elsewhere...
The 113 highest-paid employees at the Federal Reserve's Washington headquarters pull an average $246,506 per yearmore than Fed chief Janet Yellen, whose annual salary is $201,700. The information may provide ammo to House Republicans sponsoring a bill that requires the central bank to publicly disclose staff salaries. However, Reuters also notes that "the average salary of all [the Fed's] staffers was $121,279, excluding benefits, a figure that lags behind other financial regulators."
