Prayers Answered?
In Judaism, the miracle of Hanukkah refers to the single day's worth of oil that managed to burn for eight days, allowing the temple menorah to stay lit until a fresh supply of fuel arrived. In the annals of Citigroup Inc., the miracle of Hanukkah may mean something else entirely.
Speaking Wednesday evening at a UJA-Federation of New York cocktail reception in his honor, Citi Chief Executive Vikram Pandit shared with the audience a story about his trip to Israel late last year. Taking a break from his meetings there, the CEO toured the Old City in Jerusalem. It was a Hanukkah night, and when Pandit arrived at the Western Wall and saw visitors scribbling prayer notes on pieces of paper that they tucked into the wall's crevices, he decided to take part in the ritual.
"I can't exactly share with you what I wrote," said Pandit, who was being feted by the Jewish organization for his philanthropic leadership, "but let me tell you, 24 hours afterward, the U.S. government sold all of their stock in Citi. So needless to say I feel like an honorary member of the community."
The feeling most likely is mutual: the cocktail reception celebrating Pandit raised $900,000 for the annual campaign, which helps fund more than 100 health and human-service agencies in New York and around the world.
Alien Priorities
It's hard to put a financial value on certain things. It turns out that neither the search for extraterrestrial intelligence nor bank bonuses is among them.
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The comparison struck us as strange, though the campaign to limit banker bonuses does share one trait with the search for extraterrestrial life: a lack of success.
Icing on the Deal
Capital One Bank isn't just trying to appeal to consumers' wallets. It has their stomachs (and moms) in mind, too.
Just in time for Mother's Day, the banking arm of Capital One Financial Corp. is encouraging residents of the Austin, Texas, area to stop by select locations of a local bakery this week for a special buy-one-get-five cupcakes offer to celebrate the launch of its free, high-interest checking account.
The pitch: Five times the treats and five times more interest than the national average.
Residents who take advantage of the promotion, which runs during lunchtime on May 5 to May 7, at Hey Cupcake! truck locations around the city, don't even have to be Capital One customers or open an account.
But Capital One is banking on the allure of free checking, which is becoming harder to find these days. The account has no monthly service fee, no minimum balance and reimburses up to $20 a month of ATM fees charged by other banks.
The Posh Dakota(s)
Move over, Los Angeles and New York. Pierre, S.D., could make a suitable backdrop for an upcoming season of "The Millionaire Matchmaker" on Bravo.
According to a study by the Deloitte Center for Financial Services, part of the Deloitte audit and consulting firm, both North and South Dakota are poised to see the biggest growth in the number of millionaire households by the year 2020 — about 10%, compared with the national average of 7% to 8%.
To be fair, the big growth is off a small base: South Dakota is home to only about 15,000 millionaires, the study said, while North Dakota is home to roughly 12,000 such individuals. California, meanwhile, has 1.3 million households with assets valued at $1 million or more, and New York has 758,000.
By 2020, the study predicted, California, Texas, New York and Florida are likely to have the greatest number of millionaires, while the Midwest is expected to have the smallest.
New Jersey is forecast to be the state with the highest density of millionaires (24.6%) by 2020, taking that title away from Connecticut, where today 14.2% of households in the state have assets of more than $1 million.
The purpose of the Deloitte study was to help wealth managers understand how the wealth of households around the world might grow in the future.
