Commercial banking

Morais, who leads the auto lender's consumer and commercial banking divisions, is preparing to leave as Ally Financial conducts a search for its next chief executive officer. She had been seen as a potential candidate to replace outgoing CEO Jeffrey Brown.

Firms including Banco Santander and Toronto-Dominion Bank's U.S. investment banking arms have been adding to their convertible bond teams, anticipating that companies refinancing existing debt will be drawn to the asset class in the next several years.

The big China deals that lined rainmakers' pockets for decades have evaporated. Banks and law firms alike are cutting jobs. Those advisers that remain are chasing smaller deals and taking extended vacations.

The Champaign, Illinois-based company said it would pay $41.6 million to acquire Merchants and Manufacturers Bank Corp., which has five branches in the Greater Chicago area.

Purchases by banks, airlines, industrial heavyweights and other businesses fell for the first time last year, according to Bloomberg Green's analysis of data in three public registries covering more than 260,000 transactions since 2010. Yet corporate buyers increased purchases of offsets derived from a particularly controversial source — wind, hydro and solar projects.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group's Chief Executive Officer Jun Ohta, who pursued an aggressive expansion abroad during his four years at the helm of Japan's second-largest bank, has died. He was 65. 

Wells Fargo makes a $1.5 million investment in Black entrepreneurship; America Express promotes small businesses through augmented reality; shareholders approve the Banc of California-PacWest merger; and more in the weekly banking news roundup.

Dream Chasers upped its bid for Carver, one of the nation's largest and highest-profile Black banks, by a quarter, to $3.25 per share, dismissing the growth strategy interim CEO Craig MacKay outlined in a recent shareholder letter.

There's a reason why successful bankers with long careers look back on their time spent as vice presidents as among the best of their working years.

Amid a deal drought that has dragged on for more than a year, Wells Fargo is cutting 40 to 50 jobs in its corporate and investment bank division, say people with knowledge of the decision.