Resources

Making bank buyouts work has long been a risky business. As the sudden ouster of First Niagara (FNFG) CEO John Koelmel shows, it may have gotten riskier still. Behind the perils are the complications of conducting due diligence, evaluating troubled assets, navigating regulations and pleasing dilution-averse shareholders.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is planning a crackdown on the interest rate markups that auto dealers add onto the cost of car loans. Although it's dealers who originate the loans, the CFPB lacks the authority to regulate them directly. Bankers fear that as a result the agency will turn its focus to holding them accountable for monitoring loans made by the dealers with whom they work.

Lending to small and mid-sized enterprises and fee businesses like wealth management are the key to Zions Bancorp.'s growth plans, says its CEO Harris Simmons.

The London Whale, the attorney general's "too big to jail" bombshell and stress test failures have all added to the calls for big banks to split up. For the first time since the financial crisis, shotgun breakups are becoming a very real possibility.

The biggest challenge facing bankers these days is not regulation or economic sluggishness. It's figuring out how to charge for products and services that bank customers have grown to expect for free, says PNC's CEO-in-waiting William Demchak.

Top bankers went out of their way to praise the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its Director, Richard Cordray, at American Banker's Retail Financial Services Conference. Despite the happy talk, they stopped short of calling for the GOP to end its opposition to the bureau or for Cordray's directorship to be made permanent.

Hackers are launching increasingly sophisticated attacks on financial institutions. For bankers, there are still effective counter-measures to put in place and ways to keep the bad guys at bay.

The economy is well served by banks of all sizes, and the forced breakup of the biggest institutions would be misguided, says Zions Bancorp. Chief Executive Harris Simmons.

Over 40 million Americans are under- or un-banked. Operation HOPE Chief Executive John Hope Bryant discusses how banks can make customers out of this under-served market and do well by doing good in the process.