Banking

The ruling comes in a lawsuit New York Attorney General Letitia James filed in 2020, claiming Jonathan Braun and others made thousands of merchant cash advances to small businesses, charged annualized interest that sometimes exceeded 1,000% and defrauded and harassed borrowers. 

BMO says the shutdown will result in job losses as it shifts its resources to other areas.

USAlliance Federal Credit Union names Harry Zhu as its next president and chief executive; HSBC launches business account-opening portal in 20 countries; Swift enters next phase of its central bank digital currency solution and more in the weekly banking news roundup.

Commercial real estate loans are a growing area of concern for banks. But OceanFirst says its exposure to a troubled shared credit tied to a Manhattan office building isn't a sign of broader problems in its portfolio.

Carrie Tolstedt, the company's former retail banking chief, was sentenced to three years of probation, including six months of home confinement. A federal judge detailed why she denied the stiffer sentence sought by federal prosecutors, who wanted to send a message about the consequences of white-collar crime.

A movement is afoot to transfer the job of the Federal Home Loan banks to the Federal Reserve. This would be a disaster for small lenders.

Greg Carmichael, the former CEO of Fifth Third, will join the Los Angeles bank as its executive chair. The move comes a few weeks after City National, which is a unit of Royal Bank of Canada, reported a quarterly loss.

Despite an industrywide rough patch, EverBank still sees promise in the niche business line. The Jacksonville, Florida, company has hired a pair of prominent industry experts to lead a new division tasked with serving investment funds.

Carrie Tolstedt, scheduled to be sentenced Friday for her role in the company's phony-accounts scandal, has already paid for her crime and should receive three years probation, her attorneys argue in a sentencing memo. Prosecutors have recommended a year in prison.

Instead, the Canadian bank will try to ramp up its current strategy, which includes growth in commercial lending and technology upgrades, as well as streamline management. 

The secretive world of private credit is increasingly being funded by public money, and there will be no FDIC there to bail us out when things go bad.

The former U.S. vice president turned climate crusader says Big Oil and the banks backing it still have huge financial incentives to stick with fossil fuels, even though their decision to do so is the leading cause of the climate crisis.

Fraser has a plan to reduce the number of management layers at Citi, shrink its workforce, speed up decision-making and give herself more control of the bank's five core businesses. "It's going to make some of our people very uncomfortable," she said.

The five-year deal puts Citizens' brand name in front of New Yorkers, as the bank continues to expand after buying HSBC's East Coast branches as well as Investors Bank last year.

Frontline staffers are asking for better pay, internal talent development programs and more flexible work environments.

A handful of banks concentrated in the Southeast U.S. are facing elevated charge-offs amid the liquidation of Mountain Express Oil. First Horizon Corp., which led a syndicated loan of more than $200 million to the bankrupt company, expects to take a $70 million hit.

Lenders either write down portions of soured credits or charge them off altogether to remove them from their balance sheets. Banks also set aside reserves to cover potential future bad loans. This allowance creates a buffer for lenders to absorb losses.

Jeff Disterhoft, 56, has left GreenState Credit Union after 24 years as its chief executive.

It's a challenge Japan's largest lender must overcome as it focuses on growing its corporate banking presence in the US, said Fumitaka Nakahama, the firm's head of global corporate and investment banking.