Zombie Foreclosures, Disillusioned Shareholders, Endangered Payday Loans: Week's Best Quotes
April 30, 2013 10:45 AM
The most notable quotes from American Banker stories of the previous week. Readers are encouraged to add their own observations in the Comments fields at the bottom of each slide.
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On the participants in a public forum on 'too big to fail':
"One woman characterized herself as, 'I am the Judas goat from Wall Street.' I didn't quite know what that meant."
- Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio
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Arguing that breaking up the big banks would make the financial system more vulnerable to cyberattacks:
"We have nations attacking our financial system and we want to reduce ourselves to a lower common denominator?"
- Jim Rohr, former head of PNC Financial Group (PNC)
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(Image: Bloomberg News)
On the rise in 'zombie foreclosure,' in which a bank halts a foreclosure in order to avoid the cost of maintaining the property:
"There are literally thousands of borrowers who have been trying to hand the house back to the bank and they won't take it... If you want any better proof that the banks are slowing down the process state-by-state, based on their own internal analysis, this is it."
- James Kowalski, executive director of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid
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On his priority as chief executive of Citigroup (C):
"I'm not going to be satisfied until Citi has completely rebuilt our credibility with all of our stakeholders."
- Michael Corbat, Citigroup CEO
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Arguing that the financial crisis is no longer an excuse for poor earnings:
"The sun is coming out, and the birds are starting to chirp, and it is time to get some returns going here."
- Rick Levenson, the president of Western Financial Corp.
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On why investors are not satisfied by Hancock Holdings' plan to cut costs by $50 million:
"There are deeper cost cuts that could have been taken. The marketplace has lost confidence in management."
- Chris Marinac, an analyst at FIG Partners
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On being asked on an earnings call to explain charges related to a failed-bank purchase:
"The strongest argument for never doing an assisted acquisition again is accounting for it. And the second strongest argument is explaining the accounting for it, I think. It's ridiculous."
- Doyle Arnold, the chief financial officer at Zions Bancorporation (ZION)
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On why Wells Fargo's (WFC) focus on asset management makes sense:
"It's one of the few areas where you can still make money."
- Teresa Epperson, a managing director with consulting firm AlixPartners
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On regulators' new guidelines on deposit-advance loans:
"This is their way of killing the product."
- Jeremy Rosenblum, a bank industry lawyer at Ballard Spahr
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Noting that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seems to scrutinize high-margin products:
"You don't want to be saying, 'We make a lot of money on these products,' without being able to articulate why that's appropriate."
- Stefanie Jackman, a Ballard Spahr attorney
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On the CFPB's establishing an office to interact with banks and other financial institutions:
"We've been consistently concerned with the lack of transparency and clarity from other regulators, but this is going the other way."
- David Stevens, president and chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association
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(Image: Bloomberg News)
