Receiving Wide Coverage ... Now ex-employees take on Wells: Two former Wells Fargo managers are suing the bank, claiming they were unfairly scapegoated for raising issues about the bank’s sales practices. Reza and Marla Razzaghipour, who are husband and wife, oversaw regions in Southern California and managed a combined 3,500 employees. They were both fired last March. The lawsuit was filed August 31 in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Wells said it “denies the allegations of these two former regional presidents. The termination decisions were not retaliatory as alleged in the complaint. The company terminated the employment of these two individuals for legitimate and lawful reasons.”
Wells Fargo can’t see the forest for the trees, according to New York Times financial columnist William D. Cohan. Rather than showing “how vigilant [it] can be in trying to avoid new rounds of criticism from regulators or members of Congress, a far better place for heightened vigilance would be a revamping of a compensation system that repeatedly rewards bad behavior by Wells Fargo’s bankers and its top executives,” he writes.
Wall Street Journal Rebounding: Issuance of commercial mortgage-backed securities has increased sharply in 2017. Banks and other underwriters are on track to issue more than $16 billion of securities this month, well above the $10.7 billion that was issued in June, the previous busiest month this year. Through the end of July, $47.4 billion of deals had come to market, up from $37.9 billion during the same period last year, according to Commercial Mortgage Alert. If that trend continues, this year’s volume will easily top 2016’s full-year volume of $77.6 billion.
Share, share, that's fair: Financial crime enforcement is being hindered by a lack of collaboration and data sharing among government agencies and financial institutions, according to speakers at the International Symposium on Economic Crime at Cambridge University on Monday. “Since the early 1990s, an increasing number of specialized units have been set up within government agencies to collect, analyze and investigate reports of suspicious financial dealings,” the paper reports. “But while financial institutions have an obligation to file such reports, privacy issues, poor technology and silo mentality prevent more efficient and fruitful intelligence sharing.”
Financial Times Cyberwarfare: China’s crackdown this week on initial coin offerings is the latest round of the “ultimate tug of war” between cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology behind them, the paper comments. “It pits powerful vested interests of the financial world against those who are seeking to use technology to challenge them. That debate and a continuing cat-and-mouse game between regulators and the financial markets has merged with a more general effort from Beijing to stamp out all kinds of financial risks.”
The robots are coming: Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan warns a “big number” of people at the bank will "ultimately" lose their jobs due to technology. “The truthful answer is we won’t need as many people,” he says. “In our banks we have people behaving like robots doing mechanical things, tomorrow we’re going to have robots behaving like people.”
John Cryan, chief financial officer of UBS AG, speaks during a news conference in Zurich, Switzerland, on Tuesday, July 27, 2010. UBS AG, Switzerland's biggest bank, reported a third consecutive quarterly profit, beating analysts' estimates on higher-than-expected trading revenue. Photographer: Peter Frommenwiler/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** John Cryan
Peter Frommenwiler/Bloomberg
Quotable “I am not comfortable that the American investing public understands the substantial risk that we face systemically from cyber issues and I would like to see better disclosure around that.” — Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, speaking at New York University’s School of Law Tuesday.
The potential for a global trade war has largely undone the optimism that the industry exhibited at the beginning of the year. Here's a look at three ways that tariffs could negatively impact banks.
The online consumer lender beat revenue expectations in the first quarter, but its net income was dragged down by larger provisions that the company attributed to tariff "uncertainty."
The card processor came up short on expected profits but hit analysts' estimates on revenue in the second quarter of its fiscal 2025. CEO Ryan McInerney said growth in payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions were strong even in the face of shaky economic conditions.
At a House subcommittee hearing, Republicans proposed "tailoring" regulations for community banks while Democrats railed against Trump's tariffs and cuts to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and House Financial Services Committee ranking member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., urged the National Credit Union Administration's Inspector general to look into President Trump's removal of two board members.
