Banking

UBS AG is tightening its rules on how employees can trade securities for personal accounts, telling staffers it wants to prevent potential abuses.

Heritage Commerce in San Jose, Calif., has agreed to buy the parent company of factoring firm Bay View Funding in Santa Clara, Calif.

The hackers who raided the data banks of JPMorgan Chase & Co. used computers now linked to possible attacks on at least 13 more financial companies, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is raising questions about the policies and data banks use to vet consumers before allowing them to open a checking account.

Seeking to innovate — or, at least, appear innovative — banks across the country and around the globe are sponsoring incubators, accelerators and hackathons that nurture young tech companies and gifted programmers.

Banks have ceded market share to business-development companies, hedge funds and others when it comes to loans to midsize companies. Unless banks strengthen cross-selling techniques and embrace technology soon, then competition, Basel III and other forces will eat into their profits.

In a piece on The Clearing House website, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry said the culture fostered by top executives can have more to do with creating problems at banks than individual bad decisions.

The Salt Lake City bank has formalized programs to help employees who are in the reserves or have active-duty spouses and children deployed far from home. Its efforts range from raising funds for a family with a severely injured son, to hiring a landscaping firm to mow the lawn of an employee in need.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has issued an unpublished opinion in Lynn v. Monarch Recovery Management Inc. that supports a ruling that the agency violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

Prosperity thought it had its bases covered, adding a clause in an employment agreement with lenders at an acquired bank in Oklahoma establishing Texas law as the jurisdiction for the contract. A judge disagreed in a decision that should get the attention of banks eyeing out-of-state deals.

Citigroup, E*Trade Financial, Automatic Data Processing and Regions Financial were attacked by the same hackers that breached JPMorgan Chase, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Everything is on the table — including the table — as banks accelerate their efforts to trim real estate costs. Options range from subleasing branches that are too large to finding professional investors who will buy the branches and lease back a portion of them.

Despite the many advantages of the public cloud, big banks remain leery of putting data there.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) hired senior bankers from Rothschild and Standard Chartered Plc (STAN) for its investment banking business in the Middle East.

The Mortgage Bankers Association continues to push back against regulations stemming from the financial crisis, as the industry's biggest lobbying group continues pushing for regulatory relief to bolster the housing market — and boost profits for its members.

AT&T Mobility LLC will pay $105 million to settle multi-agency charges it illegally billed third-party charges to consumers nationwide, federal authorities announced Wednesday.

The Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion should require financial institutions to perform regular, standardized and data-driven assessments of workforce and supplier diversity.

Heritage Financial Group in Albany, Ga., has agreed to buy a branch in a northeast Atlanta suburb from PrivateBancorp.

Astoria Financial in Lake Success, N.Y., has hired former KeyCorp executive Hugh Donlon to be its chief lending officer.

The company attempted to claim tribal jurisdiction to avoid enforcement action.