Commercial lending

Earnings and total loans fell in the first quarter at M&T, but the Buffalo, New York, bank offered a rosier forecast for the rest of 2022. The outlook anticipates a shot in the arm from the recent acquisition of People's United Financial.

Bankers trying to get their net-zero CO2 targets certified now face hard deadlines to reduce capital flows to fossil fuels.

The bank has pivoted its commercial real estate operation as the rise of work-from-home arrangements has impacted market values. The only type of office space it's financing is Class-A buildings in major cities.

U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo both reported robust business loan volumes during the first quarter, while other large lenders reported smaller gains. Inflation is fueling more spending on technology, and companies are catching up on capital expenditures that they deferred earlier in the pandemic, according to bank executives.

As inflation increases, more companies are shifting to remote and hybrid work to get their costs under control. Landlords could face rising vacancies and tumbling revenue, leaving them behind on loan payments.

Banks have supported initiatives aimed at closing the racial equality gap but the industry risks undermining this by fighting new rules to gather demographic data on small-business lending.

The loss was driven by “funding spread widening as well as credit-valuation adjustments relating to both increases in commodities exposures and markdowns of derivatives receivables from Russia-associated counterparties,” the company said. 

California and New York were the first states to require the disclosure of certain pricing information to small-business borrowers. But as Utah, Virginia and other states add regulations for nonbank lenders, a fault line has emerged over the use of annual percentage rates.

JPMorgan Chase is planning to use its recently acquired stake in the Greek payments firm Viva Wallet to support lending to small businesses across Europe, an ambition that would introduce a rare cohesion to the Continent’s fragmented banking markets.

Institutions are hiring aggressively or buying up competitors to take part in an equipment finance boom as the economy continues to heal.

Barclays is developing a global private credit strategy, according to several people familiar with the situation, seeking to take part in the fast-growing $1.2 trillion asset class.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce plans to cut the emissions intensity of its lending to the oil and gas sector by 2030, part of a plan to reach net-zero emissions from its operations and financing activities by 2050.

The White House's $5.8 trillion spending proposal to Congress includes more dollars for anti-money-laundering enforcement, Small Business Administration loan guarantee programs and affordable housing financed by community development financial institutions.

American fossil-fuel suppliers are moving to tie their bank credit lines to sustainability goals, including slashing their carbon footprint. 

The move away from the scandal-plagued London interbank offered rate is going smoothly, according to a new survey of lenders and corporate borrowers. But many customers still face operational challenges ahead of a mid-2023 deadline for switching older loans.

Banks across Europe and the U.S. committed to lend tens of billions of dollars for leveraged buyouts and acquisitions. Now they need to find buyers for the debt, and demand is relatively weak.

Texas is seeking information from more than a dozen major finance firms on whether their operations discriminate against the fossil-fuel industry. 

The $1.38 trillion U.S. leveraged loan market is nearing an innovation that could finally shift back-office operations to a centralized system and away from investors having to manually track their positions — a process that can still include the occasional fax.

Prosecutors say Rafael Martinez and his company, MBE Capital, used false information to reap more than $71 million in fees from loans made under the Paycheck Protection Program.

Demand for green bonds and other financing tied to climate and environmental projects is growing and should expand further, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said.