Trump adds to his finance team; Gorman gets a raise

Wall Street Journal

Filling out the roster: President Donald Trump is expected to name several officials who served during George W. Bush's second term to his administration's financial team. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., is under consideration for deputy Treasury secretary while Jim Donovan, a senior private banker at Goldman Sachs, is said to be in the running for undersecretary for domestic finance. David Nason, who now heads GE Energy Financial Services, is the front-runner for the top bank oversight job at the Federal Reserve.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman
James Gorman, chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley, poses for a portrait following a Bloomberg Television interview on the sidelines of the Morgan Stanley 13th Annual Asia-Pacific Summit in Singapore, on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014. Gorman said major Group of 20 countries need to thaw relations to ensure regional issues don’t hamper world economic growth. Photographer: Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** James Gorman

Ups and downs: Morgan Stanley chairman and CEO James Gorman made $22.5 million last year, up 7% from $21 million the previous year. His compensation included a $5 million stock award and a salary of $1.5 million. But stock bonuses were down about 6% on average among Goldman Sachs's senior executives. That doesn't necessarily include CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who made $23 million last year but whose pay package won't be revealed until later this spring.

Wake-up call: The Heard on the Street column is warning investors in American Express "to wake up to the company's risks." Although the company's stock price is up about 20% over the past year, "the writing is on the wall, but investors can't see it. Like a lifelong Platinum-card holder oblivious to the better options now available, the company's investors are oddly unconcerned about worsening competition." The value proposition on many of the company's cards doesn't match up with those from JPMorgan Chase and Citi, the column says. Moreover, AmEx is "a net loser from higher rates," since many of its charge card holders don't carry a balance and the company funds itself with high-yield savings accounts.

Financial Times

Back in the spotlight: Goldman Sachs has "worked hard to stay out of trouble" since the global financial crisis, "when it became a symbol of Wall Street excess," the paper notes. Now, with so many former senior executives filling prominent roles in the Trump administration, it finds itself back in the public eye, and not all of that exposure has been positive.

U.K. cyberattack: An international gang of cybercriminals hit some of the U.K.'s largest banks two weeks ago, bringing down digital services at Lloyds intermittently for more than two days. No financial losses were reported.

New York Times

Mortgage maven: On Saturday, the paper published a long profile of Quicken Loans and its founder and chairman, Dan Gilbert, who "has built a game-changing company in the once-staid mortgage-lending industry." The company is now the second largest retail mortgage lender, with originations totaling nearly $100 billion last year, up eightfold since 2008. Much of that growth is the result of Gilbert's "in-your-face style" and "pugnacious stance." Gilbert, who also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers and "significant chunks" of central Detroit, once punched a former colleague at a bar mitzvah, according to the Times, although charges were never brought.

Washington Post

Sued: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit against TCF National Bank, alleging that the Minnesota-based bank misled hundreds of thousands of customers into signing up for overdraft services. The agency said TCF made new customers think signing up for overdraft services was mandatory for opening a new account, which doubled the rate at which consumers opted in to the service, according to the suit. At one point in 2014, about two-thirds of TCF customers had opted in for overdraft fees, about three times the rate at other banks, according to the CFPB. Overdraft fees were so lucrative for TCF that its CEO named his boat after the fee, the Post said.

Quotable ...

"Trump went from talking about Goldman Sachs and Wall Street having heavy influence on the government, to them literally running it." — Peter Nagy, a protestor outside Goldman's headquarters

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