Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Receiving Wide Coverage ...You had to figure that with an election night, and lots of other distractions such as the continued buzz over the SAC Capital plea deal, commercial banks would get a break for at least one 24-hour news cycle.

Receiving Wide Coverage …Atwitter About Twitter: The social-media network that's an unholy hybrid of news, opinions and procrastination priced its much-awaited initial public offering at $26 per share, above its underwriters' estimated range, for an initial valuation of $18 billion. (That's about $129 million per character that you're publishing for free in a typical 140-character Tweet.) Depending on how many shares are sold today in its first day of trading, the IPO is expected to raise up to $2.1 billion, the third biggest U.S. deal of the year and the second-biggest U.S. Internet IPO of all time, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...The Bird Is the Word: The Morning Scan is as sick of hearing about the Twitter IPO as you probably are, but it still dominates business news pages this morning. The social network's shares jumped nearly 75% on their first day of trading, in sharp contrast to the Facebook debacle last year. Hence the FT's take: "Tech industry enters new era with Twitter's IPO success. … The shadow of Facebook's troubled IPO has finally passed from the financial markets. … [An]y number of tech hopefuls are now lined up to cash in. … Twitter appears poised to become both symbol and catalyst for a new tech investment mania." That was enough for us, but if you want more Twitter coverage, there's plenty in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Wired, Fast Company

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Former TARP Head Tapped for CFTC Post: President Obama Tuesday will nominate Timothy Massad, the assistant Treasury secretary who oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to serve as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. If confirmed by the Senate, Massad will take over an agency in the midst of a massive post-financial crisis overhaul led by current chairman Gary Gensler, whose term ends at the end of the year. As head of TARP, Massad has overseen the government's bailout of banks and other institutions and leads the effort to wind down the Treasury's investments in these corporations, like the $49.3 million auction of preferred shares in seven financial institutions that closed last week. The CFTC has been at the center of several contentious battles involving the application of Dodd-Frank, notes Politico, and is charged with setting oversight of the Volcker Rule, the Washington Post says. Massad was considered among the frontrunners to head the CFTC when word first spread of Gensler's decision to leave the post. But partisan politics may hinder Massad's confirmation, and consumer advocates remain skeptical of his pedigree as a corporate lawyer specializing in financial securities and derivatives matters, says the New York Times — though before his 25-year tenure at Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, the Harvard-educated attorney began his career as an assistant to Ralph Nader, notes the Wall Street Journal.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Unveiled: The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued detailed guidelines for bank consultants, or "Wall Street's shadow regulators" (hmmm, where have we heard that term before?) on Tuesday. The guidelines require, among other things, that banks "disclose all work a consultant performed for the institution over the past three years" and "document disciplinary actions taken against the consultant and the resources the firm has to complete an assignment" in an attempt to prevent conflict of interests. Bank consultants have come under scrutiny over the past year, thanks largely to a botched foreclosure review (which saw them paid $4 for every $1 to homeowners) and a one-year ban from consulting for New York banks on Deloitte, courtesy of Benjamin Lawsky, who alleged the firm violated banking law when it reviewed Standard Chartered's anti-money laundering practices. Lawsky has also subpoenaed Promontory Financial and PricewaterhouseCoopers in connection with their work on money-laundering cases. "The scrutiny, while it might not erode the consulting industry's profits, could cost consultants individual assignments and undermine their credibility in Washington and on Wall Street," the Times notes.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Oh, JPM: JPMorgan Chase has officially cancelled its terrible idea/Twitter takeover with vice chairman Jimmy Lee after the open invitation to #AskJPM questions on the social media site backfired. Profusely. ("Right when the engagement numbers were through the roof?!" tweeted Forbes' Alex Konrad in response to the cancellation.) "The original idea — which had been kicked around the firm over the last few weeks … was to come up with an out-of-the-box way to use social media," anonymice tell Dealbook. "The target audience was students, with Mr. Lee expected to focus on career advice." Instead, the bank was bombarded with questions about foreclosures, religion and Jamie Dimon's pet preferences, among other, oft-NSFW things on Wednesday. "JPMorgan's misstep is the latest example of how marketing on social media can go wrong," the FT explains in what is, perhaps, an understatement. "As companies from banks to supermarkets embrace the medium as an effective way of building strong relationships with customers, many are finding it tricky to keep control of the conversation." Dealbook notes that no one is expected to lose their job over the kerfuffle. The failed Twitter experiment isn't the only negative press for JPM this morning, demonstrating exactly how bad of an idea it really was. The Journal updates the status of JPM's now possibly defunct billion-dollar settlement with the DOJ over mortgage-backed securities. "No announcement yet," executive Michael Cavanagh said during a banking conference, though the bank does have "a desire to move forward." (Does Eric Holder take one lump or two? #AskJPM," tweeted financial columnist James Saft.) And Dealbook's got some new details on JPM's "fruitful ties" to China's elite (the subject of another government probe into the bank) after reviewing confidential documents and interviewing anonymice. The article reveals that JPM contracted Wen Ruchun, "the only daughter of Wen Jiabao, who at the time was China's prime minister, with oversight of the economy and its financial institutions" for $75,000 a month. (Are you involved in a massive corruption scandal in China? #AskJPM," tweeted Slate blogger Matt Yglesias with a link to the Dealbook article.)

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Downgraded: Moody's downgraded four major U.S. banks — JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bank of New York Mellon — Thursday, after the rating agency concluded that the government has become less likely to bail out big firms. "The lower credit ratings could raise the cost of capital for the banks, many of which were already downgraded by Moody's following another major review undertaken last year," the FT reports. Wall Street Journal, American Banker

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Holiday Reading: The long-simmering battle between five federal agencies over the Volcker Rule appears to be in its final stage. The current draft is around 1,000 pages, and it's expected to be finalized before the end of the year. The basic dynamics here — with the Fed and the SEC pushing for looser restrictions, while the CFTC seeks tighter rules — are old news. But the New York Times has a detailed look at some of the places where the agencies remain at odds, including the draft language defining market-making. The Times also reports: "Since the Volcker Rule was first proposed in 2011, regulators have had to contend with a fierce lobbying campaign by the banks. But that effort lost momentum last year, after JPMorgan's trading debacle revealed that its traders were placing enormous speculative bets under the guise of hedging." Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the Fed is considering giving banks until July 2015 to comply with Volcker's new restrictions.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...JPMorgan Reaches Big Mortgage Accord: The New York bank agreed to a $13 billion settlement to resolve the government's longstanding issues with questionable mortgage practices. The Wall Street Journal said the "historic settlement," which ends multiple probes into mortgage bonds issued before the financial crisis, is the largest amount of fines and damages the government has secured from a company in a civil settlement. The New York Times notes that $4 billion in consumer relief was the key component of the deal. The Financial Times reported that JPMorgan agreed to not file any claims with the FDIC, which brokered the sale of Washington Mutual to the company.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...How Justice Built Its Case Against JPM: The $13 billion civil settlement JPMorgan Chase reached with the Justice Department on Tuesday, the largest penalty a single company has ever paid to the government, started with the Justice Department's discovery of a 2006 meeting in which bank executives decided to continue selling shoddy mortgage securities despite major red flags, according to the Wall Street Journal. As part of the civil settlement, JPMorgan acknowledged it told investors the mortgage loans in securities it packaged and sold complied with underwriting guidelines, while bank employees knew that many of the loans in question didn't. A team of government officials poured through documents detailing loans so weak they likely didn't even qualify as subprime mortgages — some had overstated income, inflated appraisals and skewed loan-to-value ratios. And a cooperating former employee warned her bosses the bank was vastly overstating the quality of the loans being securitized and sold in the run-up to the financial crisis. The New York Times' Dealbook take on the settlement focuses more on the negotiations between the bank and the government. The bank's CEO, Jaime Dimon was a "familiar number" on the cellphone of Tony West, a top Justice official. West repeatedly pressured the executive for more money to settle the case; the $13 billion is about half the bank's annual profit. "Mr. West's negotiating tactics underscore a broader strategy shift at the Justice Department, where prosecutors are seeking to hit Wall Street where it hurts most: the bottom line," Dealbook wrote. (Meanwhile, a recent issue of the New Yorker imagined a chummy conversation between Dimon and Eric Holder during settlement negotiations. What will become of that $13 billion? According to the Financial Times, about $4 billion will actually go to struggling homeowners. The rest will be divided between the Department of Justice, attorneys general from states including New York and California, the National Credit Union Administration and the Federal Housing Finance Authority.