Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Anxious MF: MF Global, the troubled brokerage run by former Senator and Goldman Sachs chief Jon Corzine, was seeking to find a buyer before the markets opened Monday and was reportedly close to a deal for filing Chapter 11 and selling its assets to Interactive Brokers, based in Greenwich, Conn. J. Christopher Flowers earlier was said to be a possible suitor, but the Times reported Interactive was the last bidder standing. A post on the Journal's "DealJournal" blog gives a just-the-facts-ma'am rundown of what any buyer would be getting.

Breaking News ...BB&T announced it will acquire BankAtlantic, including $2.1 billion in loans and roughly $3.3 billion in deposits, for an estimated premium of $301 million above BankAtlantic's current net asset value, the Journal reported. BankAtlantic's parent, BankAtlantic Bancorp, needed to raise capital.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...So Much for That: Bank of America dropped its plan to charge a monthly debit card fee, the last major bank to do so following widespread outrage. The public mood was clear when Jay Leno joked that on Halloween, "One kid wanted to charge me five bucks to give him candy.… I said: 'Who are you supposed to be?' He said: 'Bank of America!'" However, the impetus for the much-maligned fees — the loss of revenues as a result of new regulations, particularly the Durbin cap on interchange fees — remains. A comment posted by a Journal reader makes a salient point by channeling Milton Friedman: "There's no such thing as a free lunch, so expect to pay your bank for the honor and privilege of having an account." Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post

Breaking News ...European Central Bank Cuts Rates: Full press release and snark at ZeroHedge.

Breaking News This Morning ...Corzine Out at MF Global: And he won't seek severance.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...The Day After: "Thousands" of customers visited their local community banks and credit unions on Saturday, presumably to consummate Bank Transfer Day, the Journal reports. However, the paper raises the possibility that the megabanks losing these accounts may be whispering "good riddance" to at least some of them. "People who gravitate to credit unions tend to be unprofitable for giant banks because of the small balances they keep on deposit, low number of products they buy and the relatively high account-maintenance expenses at big financial firms," the Journal says. (Hmm, that idea sounds familiar; where did we read that before?) Lower down in the article is a refreshing acknowledgment that despite being lumped together with credit unions as "the good guys" in the Bank Transfer Day narrative, many community bankers resent their tax-exempt rivals at the CUs almost as much as they resent the too-big-to-fail banks (if not more so). Another Journal story warns consumers that while the $5 debit card fees that galvanized the Bank Transfer Day crowd are kaput, other fees are likely to take their place as banks try to somehow recoup revenues lost to the Durbin interchange regulation. (Hey, that analysis sounds familiar, too.) The Netbanker blog points out that several of the credit unions actively wooing consumers to make the big switch were using SwitchAgent, a technology developed by Deluxe Corp. that makes it easier to change banks. We must say this was a prescient and timely offering, particularly from a company whose traditional business is the very twentieth-century activity of printing checks. Another credit union featured in the NetBanker post, Verity, employed what the blog called a "gloves off" promo: "Join the Credit Union Revolution … Make a Stand." At least the ad doesn't call CUs a "movement"…

Receiving Wide Coverage ...The Blame Game: MF Global creditors have formed a committee to protect their interests in bankruptcy, the Post said. Meanwhile the "frantic search" continues for the $600 million missing from customer accounts. The Journal reports on allegations that JPMorgan delayed trade settlements by MF Global as it rushed to sell assets. Executives at MF believe that made it difficult to find a buyer, the paper says, and could have “caused” the $600 million gap. In his column, Francesco Guerrera offers three lessons to be learned from MF's failure. Still another Journal story looks at how MF investors are fairing, with their accounts frozen or moved to other firms.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Life and Debt: In this week's New Yorker, columnist James Surowiecki questions the meme that consumer deleveraging is the main reason the economic recovery's been so weak. For one thing, he notes, consumer spending has been rising for much of this year, albeit sluggishly, and nonmortgage borrowing has been climbing the last two years. Moreover, returning to the "unnaturally high" consumption levels of the bubble years is neither realistic nor desirable. The problem, Surowiecki argues, is not so much Americans' indebtedness - or their efforts to work off those debts - as they're feeling less wealthy after home prices and other investments cratered; incomes are scarcely rising fast enough to help in this regard. The upshot is that "dealing with the debt problem, or the housing crisis, is not the panacea for the economy that many have made it out to be. … We can't look to [consumers] to jump-start this recovery." While you're reconsidering widely held assumptions about personal indebtedness, check out anthropologist David Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years." We can't claim to have read all 500 pages, so we're hardly in a position to "review" this sweeping history or evaluate Graeber's thesis, which challenges the idea that a monetary debt is a moral obligation rather than a mere negotiable promise. (Just so you know where he's coming from, Graeber has been active in the Occupy Wall Street movement and is credited with coining the "We are the 99 Percent" slogan.) But just by skipping around the chapters, we've learned some fascinating things. For example, we already knew from reading Chris Skinner's Financial Services Club blog that the Knights Templar pioneered modern banking. But from Graeber we learned that the Holy Grail itself was a symbol of the "purely abstract forms of value" that were emerging with checks and credit during the Middle Ages. (Or, rather, re-emerging; one of Graeber's central points is that virtual money and credit have been around for millennia, long predating coins or cash, and that the stuff about ancient bartering systems we all read in Econ 101 was baloney.) This gave us a new perspective on the use of "holy grail" as shorthand for "widely sought business goal" (a long-exhausted cliché that, we're a little embarrassed to report, has appeared in American Banker 11 times this year). Unfortunately, the copy of "Debt" on our desk is due back at the library Wednesday. This is one borrowing we do feel morally obliged to return to the lender - and one book we might actually buy.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Et tu, UniCredit?: You can add UniCredit to the growing list of banks under scrutiny for possible sanctions violations. The Journal reports the Italian bank is being investigated by the New York County District Attorney's Office, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the U.S. Department of Justice concerning dealings its German unit HypoVereinsbank had with heavily sanctioned Iran. Few details regarding the probe have yet to become available, but the probe is apparently not the result of the high-profile money-laundering activities have received following the investigation of Standard Chartered by New York regulator Benjamin Lawsky, which ended in a $340 million settlement. According to the FT, UniCredit disclosed it was being investigating by U.S. authorities at least seven months ago, though "it appears never to have been reported in the media." Over the weekend, the bank said its German unit was in the process of conducting an internal review regarding the possible violations and that "it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time."

Receiving Wide Coverage ...The M&T-Hudson City Deal: It's the biggest bank merger announced this year, and one of the biggest since the dark days of 2008 (either No. 7 or No. 11, depending on whether you rely on the Journal or the FT, respectively). M&T, based in Buffalo, will pay $3.7 billion in stock for the struggling Hudson City in Paramus, N.J. … And it still feels kind of weird to describe Hudson City as "struggling." Remember, this was the mortgage lender that, after the bubble burst, received widespread praise for having just said no to subprime and stuck to old-timey, fuddy-duddy practices like verifying borrowers' incomes. (In 2008 Jim Cramer proclaimed Hudson City CEO Ron Hermance "the George Bailey Banker of the Year.") But mortgage lending entails hazards other than the borrower not paying you back, such as the borrower paying you back sooner than expected, and interest rate risk has bedeviled Hudson City of late. Aaron Elstein of Crain's New York Business recaps how forces largely beyond management's control (the Fed's zero interest rate policy, the expansion of Fannie and Freddie into the lower reaches of Hudson City's jumbo mortgage market) led to "a sad end" for this local savings bank. … The Journal has a short profile of M&T Chief Executive Bob Wilmers, another stalwart old-school banker. The Times' Peter Eavis notes that the all-stock deal will help the buyer build its regulatory capital ratios, which have lagged those of other regional banks. Reuters' BreakingViews raises the possibility of an unsolicited counter-bid. And The Washington Post places the deal within the broader trend of consolidation among small and midsize banks. Lastly, we had to chuckle at the anticlimactic headline for this press release: "Hudson City Bancorp, Inc. Board of Directors Under Investigation [gasp!] … by Glancy Binkow & Goldberg LLP." It's a plaintiffs' law firm, fishing for clients among Hudson City shareholders who may have been upset by Hermance's revelation on the conference call that M&T approached his bank and "it was not a bidding process at all." Fair enough, in any company the board certainly has a fiduciary responsibility to seek the best value for shareholders, but for a second there we thought it was the SEC announcing that "investigation." Sensationalism is unbecoming, counselor.