Banking

The Wall Street giant did a lot of backtracking last year, abandoning its plans to become a bank for everyone. Now it's refocusing on growing its tried-and-true businesses of dealmaking and asset management.

The Pittsburgh-based regional bank reported a jump in soured commercial and consumer credits during the fourth quarter. Still, PNC executives said the company is appropriately reserved for a mild recession.

Two weeks after Ted Pick rose to CEO, the company slightly revised its long-term targets for efficiency, return on tangible common equity and other metrics. Yet, Pick says, "there's not a change in strategy" after the departure of his predecessor, James Gorman.

The Seattle bank's stock price fell in 2023 amid concerns over rising interest rates and its concentration of multifamily loans. The buyer is FirstSun Capital Bancorp, which raised $175 million as part of the deal.

The bank agreed to pay an $18 million fine to settle the probe without admitting or denying the SEC's findings. 

The custody bank is managing expectations about its 2024 performance while assuring investors that profits will improve significantly in the medium term. AI is one path it's pursuing.

Jane Fraser says this year will be "critical" for the megabank, which is engaged in a massive, multiyear restructuring that involves cutting 20,000 jobs by the end of 2026.

The San Francisco-based bank warned for months that charge-offs were likely to start rising as some office-related loans went bad. It began to happen in the fourth quarter, which could be an omen for regional banks that have larger concentrations in the office sector.

Personal spending chugged along in the fourth quarter, thanks to the resilient job market. But loan charge-offs rose, and higher interest rates suppressed loan demand, executives say.

After a record-breaking year of reeling in business from failed banks and scared customers defecting from rivals, the largest U.S. bank expects it will keep getting larger.

Douglas Timmerman, the company's president of dealer financial services, will step in when Jeffrey Brown departs at the end of January. Ally continues its hunt for a permanent CEO.

The company spent $15.8 billion in the fourth quarter, down 2% from a year earlier, while analysts had estimated an 11% drop. Severance expenses and a special deposit insurance assessment contributed $3 billon to that total.

Navy Federal, the nation's largest credit union, is facing a lawsuit about its allegedly discriminatory mortgage lending practices.

JPMorgan Chase closed out the most profitable year in U.S. banking history with its seventh consecutive quarter of record net interest income and a surprise forecast that the windfall may continue this year. 

When big banks kick off earnings season on Friday, industry observers will be paying close attention to loan growth, deposit growth, expense growth, credit quality and capital ratios. All five areas will offer clues about the industry's trajectory in 2024.

The guidance also underscores consumer rights to obtain access to their own information as well as identities of sources providing data.

In a string of enforcement actions issued Thursday, the Federal Reserve barred one former banker from the industry for misappropriating confidential supervisory information and fined three others for misappropriating internal bank records.

Surging interest rates, recession threats and weaker stock valuations bogged down merger-and-acquisition activity last year. The 98 announced deals fell short of even 2020, when the pandemic briefly brought the economy to a standstill.

The Senate on Wednesday fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override President Biden's veto in December of a Republican-led resolution to gut the small-business data collection rule using the Congressional Review Act.

The deal by the $11.8 billion-asset Global (formerly AlaskaUSA) to acquire First Financial Northwest Bank is one of the largest bank deals ever struck by a credit union.