Commercial banking

East West Bancorp chief Dominic Ng long faced skepticism from analysts who had questioned his conservative approach to capital allocations — a strategy that has helped his Pasadena-based bank weather decades of ups and downs in the banking industry and survive amid the collapse of other California banks this spring.

The country's Big Six banks are seen as likely to continue struggling as they contend with deteriorating consumer finances and rising internal costs.

Many depositors have "shifted their funds into higher-interest-bearing accounts, increasing banks' funding costs," S&P wrote in a note summarizing the moves.

The Pittsburgh company has tapped the U.S. blue-chip bond market for the second time since the banking crisis in the spring. Companies are hurriedly raising capital before the cyclical summer slowdown that typically kicks in toward the end of August.

UBS Group AG decided to end an agreement with the Swiss government to cover losses it could incur from the rescue of Credit Suisse, a sign that the mammoth integration is on track and the stricken lender's assets might be less troublesome than initially feared.

Firms that had ratings cut included M&T Bank, Webster Financial, BOK Financial, Old National Bancorp, Pinnacle Financial Partners and Fulton Financial.

The acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank helped push the bank's capital ratio to 13.4% in the second quarter, above its target range. But First Citizens said it would focus on absorbing SVB, and assess the impact of new capital rules, before restarting buybacks.

The Federal Reserve is leading the push for broader, more standardized risk-capital rules, yet some of its board members, other regulators and industry groups are uncomfortable with the proposal.

The top five community banks have more than $670 million in combined home equity loan portfolios as of March 31, 2023.

More than half of the eight-member Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials by Barclays and Morgan Stanley voted for disclosing just 33% of so-called facilitated emissions, according to a person familiar with the process. Two members of the group voted for 100%.